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> In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10

> In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.[0] No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late. See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc. One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. An old joke - "Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business." [0] From the actual blog the author quoted from https://eand.co/what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-from-itself-58ae28cefd23 https://eand.co/what-do-you-call-a-world-that-cant-learn-fro...

robenkleene 8y ago
Why do you think those people write poetry instead of creating side project businesses?
- huffmsa 8y ago
  Regulations. Plain and simple. Your employees aren't allowed to work their asses off. They're going to expect to be able to get to work at 10, and be home by 5.
  - rat9988 8y ago
    Huh? You can be an employee and have a side project independent of your boss.
    - taneq 8y ago
      Depends on your employment contract. (OK, so given the general vibe I don't expect Europe to have the same kind of repugnant clauses I've seen elsewhere, but...)
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      I'm more talking about the difficulty associated with going from side project to fledgling company. In the US you just slap up a Delaware Corp, use basically standard documents for it's structure and ownership and you're off to the races. Is it that easy in Europe?
      - spiralx 8y ago
        It is in the UK - go to Companies House, either buy a defunct company name or register a new one, enter your details and some info about what the company will do, pay a small fee {about £25 if you're using an existing name, a bit more otherwise), done. You'll get the basic Articles of Association, share certificates etc in the post, or just download them IIRC.
  - roganartu 8y ago
    > Your employees aren't allowed to work their asses off. Strict labour laws don't really prevent this in practice, if someone _wants_ to work themselves to death they can (I've worked with a remote team from Poland before while I was in Australia. Despite Poland having far strong labour laws than Australia, some members of the Polish team voluntarily worked longer hours and just didn't report it). What labour laws do is prevent employers from forcing employees to work crazy hours. I think it's largely a cultural difference in the end. I live and work in the US now and here I've noticed the general sentiment that employees should be thankful to have a job and so should do whatever their employer says. It's also important to realise that highly compensated tech employees are less susceptible to this needing to work insane hours because we have much better leverage, but that doesn't stop people self-imposing longer hours due to cultural differences.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      I'm not talking about big companies. The question is about poetry vs side projects which in the US bloom into startups. So again, 1) there are more regulatory barriers to making the side project => startup jump, and 2) finding both people who are okay with working early stage company hours and finding work arounds to fairly compensate them is much harder.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    What if I personally prefer to work a bit longer every day, but retire a bit earlier?
- imustbeevil 8y ago
  It doesn't require capital. You can do it without involving other people. You don't need profit motivation. You can complete projects without the requirement that they produce enough income for you to survive off of. No deadlines. Less responsibilities. Quitting doesn't hurt other people. If you enjoy writing poetry you're also saving the money you would have spent paying for dopamine. Edit: It's very difficult to move ideas towards better ideas if the only feedback is silent negativity. Was the question I responded to supposed to be rhetorical?
  - robenkleene 8y ago
    Heh, no it wasn’t. I’m honestly curious what people think, and your points seems like potential explanations to me, so I don’t know why you’re being downvoted,
  - justin66 8y ago
    Nothing about your reply has anything to do with why a person might create poetry.
    - imustbeevil 8y ago
      The person I responded to asked why someone would choose Poetry over Business. Can you really, honestly, read what I wrote and say that I didn't try to come up with reasons why someone would choose Poetry over Business?
      - deleted 8y ago
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      - justin66 8y ago
        When I read what you wrote, in conjunction with this defensive post asking me to speculate as to what you were trying to do, I think of the OP's question as a question on an exam and your reply as the work of a student familiar with the concept of "business" and utterly unaware of the concept of "poetry."
countryqt30 8y ago
Living in Europe thus could mean living in the future.
k__ 8y ago
Well, Berlin is a special case for a capital city. The rest of Germany probably sees the people living there just as you, haha.
Tor3 8y ago
Another quote extracted from the text: "[T]he whole story of human progress has been written by lifting one another up, not [by] keeping anyone else down".
cribbles 8y ago
> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. This does not dispute the central point of the quoted piece, which is that the quality of life of most Americans is very poor contrast to that of the average person in some subset of European countries. I would wager that most coffee shop employees are more concerned with labor protections, healthcare, social welfare, the ability to afford housing and take vacations than whether their country’s economy is producing “innovative companies” (read: tech startups?). This was certainly true of myself when I worked in food service. Even so, this point does not stand well on its own. It may be that Europeans are deincentivized from creating enormously overvalued startups because their quality of life is much better (although I question whether this is worth bragging about, from a US standpoint). Nevertheless, I’d consider things like lack of a single market, fragmented languages and cultures, completely different VC environment, and so on to be much more impactful in that regard.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  There's obviously a pretty tight feedback mechanism between the startup trajectory and the VC environment. (I believe the former drives the latter in the long-run, rather than the opposite.)
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Our quality of life is not poor. We just have different prioritizes. See the guy who lives in a double wide but has a Corvette in the driveway.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
    This whole entire argument is pretty strange to me. It's upper class people from Europe debating with upper class people from the US where it's better for "middle class" people. If you've read Picketty at all, it's pretty clear there is no middle class. And the only place in the world a true and sizeable middle class ever existed was the post WWII United States from like the 50s to (maybe as late as) the 90s. Life sucks for lower class people everywhere. I suppose it's slightly less shitty for lower class people in Europe. According to Picketty, the capital / income ratio had been substantially higher in Europe for the last 20 years than it is the US -- and at the time of writing Capital in the 21st century, it was still higher in Europe. That is to say, social mobility -- as depressingly low as it is in the modern US -- is (and has been) MUCH worse in Europe. America's biggest flow truly is it's greatest strength. This is the most hopelessly optimistic group of people on the planet. Most Americans truly believe that one day they'll be successful. You know why they believe that? Because for 40 years, this was really the only place in the world where that was plausible for an average Joe. It's still one of the few places where it's even slightly statically likely. I think most people would trade hope for a slightly less shitty life. I think that's why Americans don't really care that much why life for lower class people in Europe is slightly better than it is for people in the US.
danjac 8y ago
> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. > No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late Um,so which is it?
- roenxi 8y ago
  It can be both. The wealthy and the capable people waste their time in coffee shops instead of working out how to do something useful; poor people and the capability-disadvantaged work in horrible jobs making ends meet.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  I think more precisely it would be "that everyone who can, is at the coffee shop writing poetry, and ironically the people who can afford to do that would otherwise be productive."
0xDEFC0DE 8y ago
Yeah, we convince people if they kill themselves for corporate, they'll get a minuscule slice of money from the top. American dream and all that. At least people in Europe have hobbies.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Most Americans enjoy a level of live that Most Europeans can only dream of. Large cars, very large houses, every product they buy is at least 20 to 30% cheaper, they have access to the latest technologies... the list goes on and on. Hobbies do not make up for the lack of opportunities.
  - rorykoehler 8y ago
    I never realised buying crap you don't need equated to a better life.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      > you don't need technically you don't need anything to live. Maybe a roof. A cover to sleep at night and keep you warm. Food to eat everyday, and that's about it. So where you draw the line as to "crap you don't need" is going to be an interesting question. Do you need a computer/phone to post comments on HN to live?
      - rorykoehler 8y ago
        I use don't need not in an existential sense but in a "you won't ever use it to it's capacity sense". For example a big car you drive alone within the speed limit in a city. A big house you only use 2 of the 10 rooms in regularly. An iMac Pro you use to browse Hackernews and read emails. You get the idea.
  - craigsmansion 8y ago
    I'm unsure if you're being cheekily ironic about American stereotypes, but everything you mention as an example of "level of life" is stuff, and how stuff's bigger and better and cheaper.
radicalbyte 8y ago
It's more because European capital is more risk averse and the labor laws here are very strong when compared to the US. That increases the risks involved in new ventures. The other thing is that Europe may have 500 million people, most of them speak a different language/culture. The US is one massive market who broadly share the same mother tongue. In the US you can have one company market to all states (and the 51st over the pond!). In Europe you need at least a dozen to get similar reach.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Although interestingly, the internal US market is in some ways less free, less competitive and suffers more regulatory barrier than the internal EU market. Here's a piece on it: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/are-eu-markets-more-competitive-than-those-in-the-u-s https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/are-eu-markets-more-c...
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > The other thing is that Europe may have 500 million people, most of them speak a different language/culture That's far from sufficient to have a strong economy. Actually the strongest economies in the world (take GNI for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nomi...) right now have small populations: Switzerland, Norway, Macau, Luxembourg, Iceland, Singapore... and the US. Most other developed countries in Western Europe rate relatively quite low.
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maxerickson 8y ago
They are also (apparently secretly) watching lots of American television programs.
mikejb 8y ago
I agree with the white-collar BS story. People work hard in Europe, and especially in cities, some need to work multiple jobs to afford a very basic life. But there's one part I disagree with: > One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. I mean, you're disagreeing with yourself here: first you say that many don't sit in a coffee shop writing poetry, only to then try to make a point basing it on everyone sitting at the coffee shop writing poetry. There's plenty of innovation in Europe - but there's also limitations that go beyond the personal limitations of people, e.g. lots of regulation and market fragmentation. And often enough, that innovation finds its way into foreign companies, where it then seems as they got shit done.
- exelius 8y ago
  I would argue against the author’s entire premise. The nature of (white collar) work is changing, even in America. I work a job that is 80% remote. I work from a coffee shop in the morning (and in fact, I am there right now!) I block my calendar and go work out whenever I feel like it. I rented a mountain cabin for a month and went skiing every day while working in the mornings and evenings. I get my work done and show up when needed for meetings — so my coworkers / supervisors don’t need to know any of this. Remote work is definitely the future for most industries. Collaboration tools are only improving, are cheaper than office space, and allows access to a global resource pool.
  - quaffapint 8y ago
    While I agree that is the future for now that is very much the exception for most of the country.
    - exelius 8y ago
      It’s changing pretty quickly at big companies; most of my friends are in a similar position. If you’re already working on a global team, it doesn’t matter much where you sit.
ptr 8y ago
One thing that I find interesting is that Sweden, a country at the high-end when it comes to taxes and social safety, scores pretty high on innovation: https://www.su.se/english/education/student-life/stockholm-sweden/sweden-second-on-the-world-index-of-innovative-countries-2018-1.383986 https://www.su.se/english/education/student-life/stockholm-s... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-kor... Apparently Stockholm is second to Silicon Valley when it comes to “unicorns” per capita. Makes me wonder why the rest of Europe isn’t at the same level? Is it the weather?
wolfgke 8y ago
> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. I rather think a central reason (at least in Germany) lies in the complicated laws regarding founding companies (including taxes etc.). Another reason is that Europe is no unified culture but a multitude of countries - each with its own language, law tradition etc. . Compare the federal states of Germany with the states of the USA and Germany with the USA and in each point of this comparison, you have similar level of culture similarity. The level of culture similarity in Europe should rather be compared to the level of culture similarity in North and South America together.
mseidl 8y ago
But everybody has better rights in the EU. So, the coffee shop worker has lots of vacation, sick days, good healthcare, free college, no worries about going bankrupt from medical expenses.
coldtea 8y ago
>No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late. See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc. Even those categories have it quite better in Europe. >One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. Well, we have the companies we want to have. As for the "innovative" companies, things like Facebook, Apple, Google, I increasingly hear that they were not that good for us to begin with, even less so BS like Instagram, Theranos, etc.
hedvig 8y ago
I can't think of any innovation the US has created recently, other than new various ways of undermining its own citizens.
rv-de 8y ago
> See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc. Yes - but - folks from those professions are still going to enjoy a much nicer life in Europe than in the States. I'm referring to NHS, job security, unemployment insurance, retirement and availability of pass time activities even in remoter areas. > One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. I mean is that a pun or just a Freudian slip - b/c with regard to 90% of SV's output this choice of words is fitting well. Also a modern interpretation of civilized society is embracing a life not centered around productivity. > One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. That statement is wrong on both ends. European companies - especially those coming from central and northern Europe - are also just not as loud and attention craving as the usual fund driven start ups from the States. Also few people are writing poetry here. > An old joke - "Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business." MBAs aren't the only ones founding companies - also scientists and engineers do so.
themagician 8y ago
American innovation today: we found a way to pay taxi drivers less than minimum wage and give them no benefits, while also avoiding state licensing. So much of modern American innovation is just exploitation. Not but a decade ago we had a financial crisis that caused a global recession as a result of MBAs “getting shit done” and their innovative new financial products.
eecc 8y ago
Uhm, someone might argue that you're still living off the windfall of state subsidies your technological complex received during the Cold War to win the arms race with the Russians... ... but that would be needlessly sarcastic wouldn't it? ;/
sametmax 8y ago
No it's not a matter of productivity. I usually find my european coworkers more productive than the american ones : less bullshit, more action. We work less, we we get as much done. IMO, It's a matter of how we see risks. The american culture value risk taking more than the european one. This affects investment, pride, communication, etc. It has very good and very bad side effects of course.
mnm1 8y ago
Great. We start a lot of companies while the lives of people in and also around those companies are destroyed by them. I don't understand this fetish for businesses that mostly destroy people's lives while not even providing a living wage in most cases. That's not something to brag about; that's something to be ashamed about as a society and a culture. It's not just the employees, but everyone's lives that are affected. We let these businesses pollute and get away with murder and when we try to change them, we can't because we let them write our laws and buy our politicians. In most places lobbying is called bribing and corruption. It still happens but at least it's not legal. If you think starting companies is the epitome of what a society can do, that's a sad state of affairs and a shortsighted view of the effects. But I bet you think you'll be the CEO and what happens to everyone else doesn't matter because you'll have a cushy life. Exactly the typical American viewpoint this article decries. Just a bunch of embarrassed millionaires (or should it be billionaires now?) indeed.
dgudkov 8y ago
>An old joke - "Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business." Sounds more like an American joke rather than European.
piva00 8y ago
Tell me then how Sweden can be as productive and innovative as it is while most people work from 9-5 (or even 9-4) on office jobs and get shit done? Why should everyone strive to be the MOST PRODUCTIVE person ever, here we work to live, not live to work as is my impression of American work culture. The worst part is that the US export that fucked up culture to satellite countries, I came from Brazil to Sweden, Brazil is basically a poor and uneducated US regarding individualism and work culture, I would never want to work in that environment again. I don't need to be rich here in Sweden to enjoy my life, I can travel, I can have hobbies that require expensive gear, everything that a normal person would like to have to have a very comfortable life is accessible. In Brazil (and from what I've seen partly in the US) people just want to get rich to get to this level of accessibility. It's a very different mindset and I can tell it is much healthier for everyday folks.

robenkleene 8y ago

Why do you think those people write poetry instead of creating side project businesses?

huffmsa 8y ago
Regulations. Plain and simple. Your employees aren't allowed to work their asses off. They're going to expect to be able to get to work at 10, and be home by 5.
- rat9988 8y ago
  Huh? You can be an employee and have a side project independent of your boss.
  - taneq 8y ago
    Depends on your employment contract. (OK, so given the general vibe I don't expect Europe to have the same kind of repugnant clauses I've seen elsewhere, but...)
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    I'm more talking about the difficulty associated with going from side project to fledgling company. In the US you just slap up a Delaware Corp, use basically standard documents for it's structure and ownership and you're off to the races. Is it that easy in Europe?
    - spiralx 8y ago
      It is in the UK - go to Companies House, either buy a defunct company name or register a new one, enter your details and some info about what the company will do, pay a small fee {about £25 if you're using an existing name, a bit more otherwise), done. You'll get the basic Articles of Association, share certificates etc in the post, or just download them IIRC.
- roganartu 8y ago
  > Your employees aren't allowed to work their asses off. Strict labour laws don't really prevent this in practice, if someone _wants_ to work themselves to death they can (I've worked with a remote team from Poland before while I was in Australia. Despite Poland having far strong labour laws than Australia, some members of the Polish team voluntarily worked longer hours and just didn't report it). What labour laws do is prevent employers from forcing employees to work crazy hours. I think it's largely a cultural difference in the end. I live and work in the US now and here I've noticed the general sentiment that employees should be thankful to have a job and so should do whatever their employer says. It's also important to realise that highly compensated tech employees are less susceptible to this needing to work insane hours because we have much better leverage, but that doesn't stop people self-imposing longer hours due to cultural differences.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    I'm not talking about big companies. The question is about poetry vs side projects which in the US bloom into startups. So again, 1) there are more regulatory barriers to making the side project => startup jump, and 2) finding both people who are okay with working early stage company hours and finding work arounds to fairly compensate them is much harder.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  What if I personally prefer to work a bit longer every day, but retire a bit earlier?
imustbeevil 8y ago
It doesn't require capital. You can do it without involving other people. You don't need profit motivation. You can complete projects without the requirement that they produce enough income for you to survive off of. No deadlines. Less responsibilities. Quitting doesn't hurt other people. If you enjoy writing poetry you're also saving the money you would have spent paying for dopamine. Edit: It's very difficult to move ideas towards better ideas if the only feedback is silent negativity. Was the question I responded to supposed to be rhetorical?
- robenkleene 8y ago
  Heh, no it wasn’t. I’m honestly curious what people think, and your points seems like potential explanations to me, so I don’t know why you’re being downvoted,
- justin66 8y ago
  Nothing about your reply has anything to do with why a person might create poetry.
  - imustbeevil 8y ago
    The person I responded to asked why someone would choose Poetry over Business. Can you really, honestly, read what I wrote and say that I didn't try to come up with reasons why someone would choose Poetry over Business?
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    - justin66 8y ago
      When I read what you wrote, in conjunction with this defensive post asking me to speculate as to what you were trying to do, I think of the OP's question as a question on an exam and your reply as the work of a student familiar with the concept of "business" and utterly unaware of the concept of "poetry."

countryqt30 8y ago

Living in Europe thus could mean living in the future.

k__ 8y ago

Well, Berlin is a special case for a capital city. The rest of Germany probably sees the people living there just as you, haha.

Tor3 8y ago

Another quote extracted from the text: "[T]he whole story of human progress has been written by lifting one another up, not [by] keeping anyone else down".

cribbles 8y ago

> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. This does not dispute the central point of the quoted piece, which is that the quality of life of most Americans is very poor contrast to that of the average person in some subset of European countries. I would wager that most coffee shop employees are more concerned with labor protections, healthcare, social welfare, the ability to afford housing and take vacations than whether their country’s economy is producing “innovative companies” (read: tech startups?). This was certainly true of myself when I worked in food service. Even so, this point does not stand well on its own. It may be that Europeans are deincentivized from creating enormously overvalued startups because their quality of life is much better (although I question whether this is worth bragging about, from a US standpoint). Nevertheless, I’d consider things like lack of a single market, fragmented languages and cultures, completely different VC environment, and so on to be much more impactful in that regard.

sokoloff 8y ago
There's obviously a pretty tight feedback mechanism between the startup trajectory and the VC environment. (I believe the former drives the latter in the long-run, rather than the opposite.)
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Our quality of life is not poor. We just have different prioritizes. See the guy who lives in a double wide but has a Corvette in the driveway.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  This whole entire argument is pretty strange to me. It's upper class people from Europe debating with upper class people from the US where it's better for "middle class" people. If you've read Picketty at all, it's pretty clear there is no middle class. And the only place in the world a true and sizeable middle class ever existed was the post WWII United States from like the 50s to (maybe as late as) the 90s. Life sucks for lower class people everywhere. I suppose it's slightly less shitty for lower class people in Europe. According to Picketty, the capital / income ratio had been substantially higher in Europe for the last 20 years than it is the US -- and at the time of writing Capital in the 21st century, it was still higher in Europe. That is to say, social mobility -- as depressingly low as it is in the modern US -- is (and has been) MUCH worse in Europe. America's biggest flow truly is it's greatest strength. This is the most hopelessly optimistic group of people on the planet. Most Americans truly believe that one day they'll be successful. You know why they believe that? Because for 40 years, this was really the only place in the world where that was plausible for an average Joe. It's still one of the few places where it's even slightly statically likely. I think most people would trade hope for a slightly less shitty life. I think that's why Americans don't really care that much why life for lower class people in Europe is slightly better than it is for people in the US.

danjac 8y ago

> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. > No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late Um,so which is it?

roenxi 8y ago
It can be both. The wealthy and the capable people waste their time in coffee shops instead of working out how to do something useful; poor people and the capability-disadvantaged work in horrible jobs making ends meet.
microcolonel 8y ago
I think more precisely it would be "that everyone who can, is at the coffee shop writing poetry, and ironically the people who can afford to do that would otherwise be productive."

0xDEFC0DE 8y ago

Yeah, we convince people if they kill themselves for corporate, they'll get a minuscule slice of money from the top. American dream and all that. At least people in Europe have hobbies.

ekianjo 8y ago
Most Americans enjoy a level of live that Most Europeans can only dream of. Large cars, very large houses, every product they buy is at least 20 to 30% cheaper, they have access to the latest technologies... the list goes on and on. Hobbies do not make up for the lack of opportunities.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  I never realised buying crap you don't need equated to a better life.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > you don't need technically you don't need anything to live. Maybe a roof. A cover to sleep at night and keep you warm. Food to eat everyday, and that's about it. So where you draw the line as to "crap you don't need" is going to be an interesting question. Do you need a computer/phone to post comments on HN to live?
    - rorykoehler 8y ago
      I use don't need not in an existential sense but in a "you won't ever use it to it's capacity sense". For example a big car you drive alone within the speed limit in a city. A big house you only use 2 of the 10 rooms in regularly. An iMac Pro you use to browse Hackernews and read emails. You get the idea.
- craigsmansion 8y ago
  I'm unsure if you're being cheekily ironic about American stereotypes, but everything you mention as an example of "level of life" is stuff, and how stuff's bigger and better and cheaper.

radicalbyte 8y ago

It's more because European capital is more risk averse and the labor laws here are very strong when compared to the US. That increases the risks involved in new ventures. The other thing is that Europe may have 500 million people, most of them speak a different language/culture. The US is one massive market who broadly share the same mother tongue. In the US you can have one company market to all states (and the 51st over the pond!). In Europe you need at least a dozen to get similar reach.

EliRivers 8y ago
Although interestingly, the internal US market is in some ways less free, less competitive and suffers more regulatory barrier than the internal EU market. Here's a piece on it: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/are-eu-markets-more-competitive-than-those-in-the-u-s https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/are-eu-markets-more-c...
ekianjo 8y ago
> The other thing is that Europe may have 500 million people, most of them speak a different language/culture That's far from sufficient to have a strong economy. Actually the strongest economies in the world (take GNI for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(nomi...) right now have small populations: Switzerland, Norway, Macau, Luxembourg, Iceland, Singapore... and the US. Most other developed countries in Western Europe rate relatively quite low.
- deleted 8y ago
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maxerickson 8y ago

They are also (apparently secretly) watching lots of American television programs.

mikejb 8y ago

I agree with the white-collar BS story. People work hard in Europe, and especially in cities, some need to work multiple jobs to afford a very basic life. But there's one part I disagree with: > One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. I mean, you're disagreeing with yourself here: first you say that many don't sit in a coffee shop writing poetry, only to then try to make a point basing it on everyone sitting at the coffee shop writing poetry. There's plenty of innovation in Europe - but there's also limitations that go beyond the personal limitations of people, e.g. lots of regulation and market fragmentation. And often enough, that innovation finds its way into foreign companies, where it then seems as they got shit done.

exelius 8y ago
I would argue against the author’s entire premise. The nature of (white collar) work is changing, even in America. I work a job that is 80% remote. I work from a coffee shop in the morning (and in fact, I am there right now!) I block my calendar and go work out whenever I feel like it. I rented a mountain cabin for a month and went skiing every day while working in the mornings and evenings. I get my work done and show up when needed for meetings — so my coworkers / supervisors don’t need to know any of this. Remote work is definitely the future for most industries. Collaboration tools are only improving, are cheaper than office space, and allows access to a global resource pool.
- quaffapint 8y ago
  While I agree that is the future for now that is very much the exception for most of the country.
  - exelius 8y ago
    It’s changing pretty quickly at big companies; most of my friends are in a similar position. If you’re already working on a global team, it doesn’t matter much where you sit.

ptr 8y ago

One thing that I find interesting is that Sweden, a country at the high-end when it comes to taxes and social safety, scores pretty high on innovation: https://www.su.se/english/education/student-life/stockholm-sweden/sweden-second-on-the-world-index-of-innovative-countries-2018-1.383986 https://www.su.se/english/education/student-life/stockholm-s... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-kor... Apparently Stockholm is second to Silicon Valley when it comes to “unicorns” per capita. Makes me wonder why the rest of Europe isn’t at the same level? Is it the weather?

wolfgke 8y ago

> One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. I rather think a central reason (at least in Germany) lies in the complicated laws regarding founding companies (including taxes etc.). Another reason is that Europe is no unified culture but a multitude of countries - each with its own language, law tradition etc. . Compare the federal states of Germany with the states of the USA and Germany with the USA and in each point of this comparison, you have similar level of culture similarity. The level of culture similarity in Europe should rather be compared to the level of culture similarity in North and South America together.

mseidl 8y ago

But everybody has better rights in the EU. So, the coffee shop worker has lots of vacation, sick days, good healthcare, free college, no worries about going bankrupt from medical expenses.

coldtea 8y ago

>No, not everyone in Europe gets to live white-collar worker dream of writing poetry at the coffee shop and coming in late. See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc. Even those categories have it quite better in Europe. >One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. Well, we have the companies we want to have. As for the "innovative" companies, things like Facebook, Apple, Google, I increasingly hear that they were not that good for us to begin with, even less so BS like Instagram, Theranos, etc.

hedvig 8y ago

I can't think of any innovation the US has created recently, other than new various ways of undermining its own citizens.

rv-de 8y ago

> See the people working at the coffee shop, the construction workers, garbage men, etc. Yes - but - folks from those professions are still going to enjoy a much nicer life in Europe than in the States. I'm referring to NHS, job security, unemployment insurance, retirement and availability of pass time activities even in remoter areas. > One thing I love about America is that people still get shit done here. I mean is that a pun or just a Freudian slip - b/c with regard to 90% of SV's output this choice of words is fitting well. Also a modern interpretation of civilized society is embracing a life not centered around productivity. > One reason that Europe has very few innovative new companies created in the last 25 years is that everyone is at the coffee shop writing poetry. That statement is wrong on both ends. European companies - especially those coming from central and northern Europe - are also just not as loud and attention craving as the usual fund driven start ups from the States. Also few people are writing poetry here. > An old joke - "Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business." MBAs aren't the only ones founding companies - also scientists and engineers do so.

themagician 8y ago

American innovation today: we found a way to pay taxi drivers less than minimum wage and give them no benefits, while also avoiding state licensing. So much of modern American innovation is just exploitation. Not but a decade ago we had a financial crisis that caused a global recession as a result of MBAs “getting shit done” and their innovative new financial products.

eecc 8y ago

Uhm, someone might argue that you're still living off the windfall of state subsidies your technological complex received during the Cold War to win the arms race with the Russians... ... but that would be needlessly sarcastic wouldn't it? ;/

sametmax 8y ago

No it's not a matter of productivity. I usually find my european coworkers more productive than the american ones : less bullshit, more action. We work less, we we get as much done. IMO, It's a matter of how we see risks. The american culture value risk taking more than the european one. This affects investment, pride, communication, etc. It has very good and very bad side effects of course.

mnm1 8y ago

Great. We start a lot of companies while the lives of people in and also around those companies are destroyed by them. I don't understand this fetish for businesses that mostly destroy people's lives while not even providing a living wage in most cases. That's not something to brag about; that's something to be ashamed about as a society and a culture. It's not just the employees, but everyone's lives that are affected. We let these businesses pollute and get away with murder and when we try to change them, we can't because we let them write our laws and buy our politicians. In most places lobbying is called bribing and corruption. It still happens but at least it's not legal. If you think starting companies is the epitome of what a society can do, that's a sad state of affairs and a shortsighted view of the effects. But I bet you think you'll be the CEO and what happens to everyone else doesn't matter because you'll have a cushy life. Exactly the typical American viewpoint this article decries. Just a bunch of embarrassed millionaires (or should it be billionaires now?) indeed.

dgudkov 8y ago

>An old joke - "Every MBA in America dreams of starting a billion dollar business. Every MBA in Europe dreams of starting a satellite office of the American business." Sounds more like an American joke rather than European.

piva00 8y ago

Tell me then how Sweden can be as productive and innovative as it is while most people work from 9-5 (or even 9-4) on office jobs and get shit done? Why should everyone strive to be the MOST PRODUCTIVE person ever, here we work to live, not live to work as is my impression of American work culture. The worst part is that the US export that fucked up culture to satellite countries, I came from Brazil to Sweden, Brazil is basically a poor and uneducated US regarding individualism and work culture, I would never want to work in that environment again. I don't need to be rich here in Sweden to enjoy my life, I can travel, I can have hobbies that require expensive gear, everything that a normal person would like to have to have a very comfortable life is accessible. In Brazil (and from what I've seen partly in the US) people just want to get rich to get to this level of accessibility. It's a very different mindset and I can tell it is much healthier for everyday folks.