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Nobody is stopping you from owning a factory. The workers are also free to leave anytime without any notice or responsibility to the employer. This is a flexibl
by manigandham 7y ago
Nobody is stopping you from owning a factory. The workers are also free to leave anytime without any notice or responsibility to the employer. This is a flexible arrangement for both parties that focuses on individual freedom and responsibility.
It also helps make it easy for entrepreneurs to start companies and create jobs in the US and is a direct reason why we don't see the same innovation in regulation-heavy regions.
- jashmatthews 7y agoSweden and Germany, for example, are heavily regulated but have more innovation in terms of GDP% than the USA. If you're talking about why we don't see more visible commercial innovation from European countries then it's more about access to the enormous amounts of capital to build a big name startup like Uber etc. Nobody notices the legions of small bootstrapped or seed to profitable software businesses across the EU.
- manigandham 7y agoHow do you measure "innovation in terms of GDP"? I certainly don't see trillion-dollar world-changing companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon coming from those regions. What small business could replicate the impact of Windows, or Gmail or the iPhone?
- haneefmubarak 7y ago(not the parent) I would think that since innovation and growth (caused by innovative use of resources or increase in efficiency or novel products and services) in general should be relative to the population and its state to begin with, nominal GDP growth per annum would be a reasonable metric as a proxy for the wildly non-measurable "innovation in terms of GDP"; for reference, here's the data for 2018: USA: 2.9% Canada: 1.9% Sweden: 2.2% Norway: 1.3% Finland: 1.7% Denmark: 2.4% Germany: 1.5% France: 1.7% Ireland: 8.2% (not a typo, likely explained by expansion of business services from NA into EU) UK: 1.4% Portugal: 2.4% Italy: 0.8% Greece: 1.9% Spain: 2.4%
- jashmatthews 7y agoNo need to approximate: https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm Germany is at 3.4% of GDP spending on R&D and the USA at 2.8% France is also right up there at 2.2%
- haneefmubarak 7y agoSpending on research and development is an awful proxy for results delivered by said R&D, which is what we would actually want to measure if we're looking for innovation relative to GDP.
- mrkstu 7y agoAlso highly dependent on the laws of the individual countries as to what counts as R&D spending.
- jashmatthews 7y agoLike the car? Volkswagen is twice the size of Microsoft by revenue. I'm going with the OECD definition here: https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm
- manigandham 7y agoThe car was invented in the 1800s, and has seen mature competitors in many other countries like Japan. In the current century, Tesla is the auto giant leaving behind all the legacy manufacturers while also branching into energy products. Pivotal products are a better milestone than vague estimates of R&D spending.
- TylerE 7y agoThat is a...wildly imaginative take. Tesla sales are a fraction of any of the big three in terms of sales or revenue. They sold 192,000 vehicles in the US in 2019. Each of the Big Three sold well over three million. Tesla currently loses $2500 on every vehicle they sell
- manigandham 7y agoThis thread is about innovation, not sales.
- disgruntledphd2 7y agoI mean, I get your point, but unless there are enough sales, pretty soon there will be no money for innovation.
- 2rsf 7y agoHow are Tesla more innovative than other companies ? They kicked off a big conceptual change but I don't see that they have a significant technological advantage over other companies like Volvo.
- bildung 7y agoIt's worth noting that those companies have trillion dollar stock valuation, but by far less actual revenue. Average revenue per year of these companies is "just" 159 billions. Amazon has had a revenue of 88 billion. German companies with more revenue than Amazon: Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW, Allianz, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Uniper, Bosch. On the smaller end, Germany also has a comparable number of employer firms per capita as the U.S. Empirically it largely is a myth that worker protection and consumer protection stiffles enterprises or innovation.
- manigandham 7y agoAmazon 2019 revenue is $280B, which is greater than every company you listed and tied with Volkswagen. Valuation reflects market sentiment and potential but perhaps I should have left it out. The real focus is the "world-changing" aspect of the products produced. What have been the recent global innovations produced by those German companies? Anything turned into a household name?
- jashmatthews 7y agoEvery Apple iPhone and Watch uses Bosch's gyroscope and accelerometer tech. They're also the market leader in smaller EV tech used in electric motorcycles, bikes and scooters. It all goes out to consumers without them knowing. Even Tesla use Bosch parts. That's why they're called a "hidden champion".
- manigandham 7y agoThe whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's what you do with that internal tech that matters. We've had gyroscopes for a century. The iPhone is innovative because it used that to implement a new device that changed mobile computing.
- bildung 7y agoYou're correct regarding Amazon's revenue, I somehow got the 2014 data, sorry. I'm actually not quite sure what you mean with the "global innovations" part, though, could you expand on that? What is it that makes e.g. Microsoft innovative? What I see is the your big four all sell consumer product/ services and thus are more visible. E.G. Bosch is developing electric powertrain components, produces radar/lidar and video sensors for autonomous driving. Bosch also produces the robots used in those mostly-automated factories.
- ekianjo 7y agoHow do you measure innovation? American companies are on average far wealthier than companies in Europe and spend more in R&D as a result.
- baddox 7y agoThe total amount of land is relatively fixed on human time scales. Given that, everyone who owns a factory (or any land) does make it more difficult for you to own a factory.
- manigandham 7y agoThat’s quite a stretch since 95% of the world population lives on 10% of the land. [1] We can also build vertically, and space is a whole new frontier that is seeing lots of interest lately. I don't see this as a serious limitation. Opportunity is endless. 1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217192745.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217192745.h...
- Cyph0n 7y agoOh, I didn’t know you could stack factories on top of each other!
- manigandham 7y agoYou literally can. Are you being facetious? What's going on with this discussion?
- baddox 7y agoTry to go build your factory on top of an existing factory. I suspect someone will stop you.
- manigandham 7y agoSkyscrapers and multistory industrial centers with multiple tenants already exist. But really? The thing most preventing you from starting a factory today is... because you can't find the land? Alright then.
- baddox 7y ago
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago> Nobody is stopping you from owning a factory Seriously? Should they eat cake as well? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
- manigandham 7y agoSeriously, who's stopping you? It's ironic to say that on HN when YC has helped launch thousands of companies and several self-made billionaires. The ability to hire and fire fast is undeniably helpful for companies, and being able to quit and move to new jobs is just as useful for personal career development. It might not be for everyone, but it's not any less valid.
- adrianN 7y agoThe typical member of the precariat doesn't have the financial means of taking an unpaid sick day. How on earth do you imagine that they have the means of starting their own company?
- manigandham 7y agoThe discussion was about at-will employment in America. There are pros/cons to both employee and employer, and it is an absolute truth that this arrangement helps companies grow and helps employees eventually start their own companies - as opposed to different regulatory environments. Adding more regulations will bring equivalent trade-offs because that's the reality of economics. Do you disagree? If you want to get bogged down in technicalities and anecdotes though, then sure life isn't fair. I worked manual labor before and now own multiple properties. I guess it's just magic.
- slumpt_ 7y agoNo one suggested it was magic. What it often is - statistically - is socioeconomics. It’s more or less the single best predictor of outcomes for you and yours. There are outliers, but we’re talking about broad systemic patterns. You evidently went to an okay UC - you probably had supportive parents. Be it emotional or financial support. Perhaps both! Perhaps your family life was reasonably stable. Perhaps you had three square meals most of your youth. The point is that you are in a position to access capital that is markedly different from a lot of individuals born into lower socioeconomics striations in society and the statistics are weighed :heavily: against them. This is often through no fault of their own. Thank your lucky stars the world aligned for you as it did. Where and with whom you started that life made a far bigger difference than any perceived grit you might think you exercised.