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What I hear from europeans is that it sucks to be there if you're ambitious. https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1893374276327137367 https://x.com/DouglasCars

What I hear from europeans is that it sucks to be there if you're ambitious. https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1893374276327137367 https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1893374276327137367

squigz 2y ago
[flagged]
- shaftoe 2y ago
  We can agree to disagree without name-calling, but the impact of compounding growth vs intentional stagnation is going to continue to widen the gap that's already opened up over a few generations.
  - Herring 2y ago
    You'll discover that compounding growth is useless to YOU, when Trump and Musk are taking 99.9% of it. Wages are stagnant. The US is #24 on the world’s happiest countries list, and has been dropping for a long while. At the top of the list, we find socialist countries with access to world-class public services like healthcare and education -- which the US is currently trying very hard to gut. The last time something like this happened, it took a Great Depression and intense widespread economic pain for Americans to snap out of it. Inequality is destabilizing and Americans are clueless (see inflation leading to Trump), so I think Europe is likely to do better in the long run.
    - shaftoe 2y ago
      These socialist countries that are so happy because of the money they pour into healthcare and education, do so at the expense of their future growth and their own self defense. This seems unsustainable. The US is also a much larger and heterogenous society compared to the countries above us on most lists, such as the scandinavian countries or Lichtenstein. Anecdotally, when the homeless have smart phones to accept donations and obesity is an epidemic of the poor, we're not suffering for material wealth. A poverty of virtue, maybe so.
      - Herring 2y ago
        This comment is sadly wrong, like saying "the sky is green". I recommend you talk to chatGPT (4o+) and learn something. Nordic countries combine high taxes and spending with competitive, open economies. Denmark and Sweden have high labor productivity and GDP per capita, etc. These societies are no longer homogeneous. Talk to the bot. Ask open-ended questions, ask for sources, read those sources. I don't have the patience to work with blind ideological bias. Like I said before, usually the only thing that helps Americans snap out of it is intense economic pain, which should happen between 2025-2035 with high cost of living, social safety net collapse, climate disasters, and maybe even AI job displacement at scale.
        shaftoe 2y ago
        In a hypothetical hacker news guide for how to win friends and influence people, I'm pretty sure "you're so wrong you should go talk to a chat bot" is not a recommended approach. I hope you're right, for what it's worth. It's a better world than "the only thing that helps Europeans snap out of it is intense economic pain combined with a Russian invasion of the Baltics"
        Herring 2y ago
        Go debate creationists for a while then come tell me I'm being abrasive. Believe me this is the easiest way when we disagree on basic facts. US culture (especially among white men) has a lot of internalized individualist, anti-union, and anti-government views, despite the incredible success of the New Deal (combined socialism+capitalism) in creating their entire world. The bot is really the best way to counter these attitudes. It beats spending hours on google.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
awongh 2y ago
When I read this, as an American it really strikes me what a trade-off the implementation of social democracy is. It does seem like they are correlated. I wish that the USA did better on taking care of people, (because it sucks right now) but some on the left act as if there are no consequences to deciding to implement these things.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > When I read this, as an American it really strikes me what a trade-off the implementation of social democracy is. It does seem like they are correlated. In my experience working with some former European entrepreneurs, the startup problem isn’t really directly related to anything about social democracy or safety nets or even taxes. They talked about how difficult, painful, and risky it was for them to start and operate a company at every turn. Even things like bankruptcy and allowing founders to move on with their lives if their startup fails, which we take for granted here, are not a given in European countries. It’s not just the government to blame. The private banking and even societal norms are very different in ways that we don’t even consider in the United States. The US is very friendly to funding and building startups. I didn’t appreciate it until talking to ex-founders from various European countries as well as many founders here who explicitly left EU countries for America because they wanted to start a company.
  - awongh 2y ago
    But these societal norms and conservatism are the reasons why it's politically possible to implement social democracy, right? I agree that it's not as simple as "regulation" and "taxes"- it's more fundamental than that. Which is why I think it'll so so hard for the USA to implement a fair social health care system, even though it needs one so badly.
  - dachworker 2y ago
    Bankruptcy law is a big one. Another big one is the reputation hit that you are going to incur if your startup fails. Europe does not believe in learning through failure. It is puzzling to a European, that there could be serial entrepreneurs with a history of 3 failed startups who still get funding for their fourth attempt.
Herring 2y ago
Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders.

What I hear from europeans is that it sucks to be there if you're ambitious. https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1893374276327137367 https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1893374276327137367

squigz 2y ago

[flagged]

shaftoe 2y ago
We can agree to disagree without name-calling, but the impact of compounding growth vs intentional stagnation is going to continue to widen the gap that's already opened up over a few generations.
- Herring 2y ago
  You'll discover that compounding growth is useless to YOU, when Trump and Musk are taking 99.9% of it. Wages are stagnant. The US is #24 on the world’s happiest countries list, and has been dropping for a long while. At the top of the list, we find socialist countries with access to world-class public services like healthcare and education -- which the US is currently trying very hard to gut. The last time something like this happened, it took a Great Depression and intense widespread economic pain for Americans to snap out of it. Inequality is destabilizing and Americans are clueless (see inflation leading to Trump), so I think Europe is likely to do better in the long run.
  - shaftoe 2y ago
    These socialist countries that are so happy because of the money they pour into healthcare and education, do so at the expense of their future growth and their own self defense. This seems unsustainable. The US is also a much larger and heterogenous society compared to the countries above us on most lists, such as the scandinavian countries or Lichtenstein. Anecdotally, when the homeless have smart phones to accept donations and obesity is an epidemic of the poor, we're not suffering for material wealth. A poverty of virtue, maybe so.
    - Herring 2y ago
      This comment is sadly wrong, like saying "the sky is green". I recommend you talk to chatGPT (4o+) and learn something. Nordic countries combine high taxes and spending with competitive, open economies. Denmark and Sweden have high labor productivity and GDP per capita, etc. These societies are no longer homogeneous. Talk to the bot. Ask open-ended questions, ask for sources, read those sources. I don't have the patience to work with blind ideological bias. Like I said before, usually the only thing that helps Americans snap out of it is intense economic pain, which should happen between 2025-2035 with high cost of living, social safety net collapse, climate disasters, and maybe even AI job displacement at scale.
      - shaftoe 2y ago
        In a hypothetical hacker news guide for how to win friends and influence people, I'm pretty sure "you're so wrong you should go talk to a chat bot" is not a recommended approach. I hope you're right, for what it's worth. It's a better world than "the only thing that helps Europeans snap out of it is intense economic pain combined with a Russian invasion of the Baltics"
        Herring 2y ago
        Go debate creationists for a while then come tell me I'm being abrasive. Believe me this is the easiest way when we disagree on basic facts. US culture (especially among white men) has a lot of internalized individualist, anti-union, and anti-government views, despite the incredible success of the New Deal (combined socialism+capitalism) in creating their entire world. The bot is really the best way to counter these attitudes. It beats spending hours on google.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

awongh 2y ago

When I read this, as an American it really strikes me what a trade-off the implementation of social democracy is. It does seem like they are correlated. I wish that the USA did better on taking care of people, (because it sucks right now) but some on the left act as if there are no consequences to deciding to implement these things.

Aurornis 2y ago
> When I read this, as an American it really strikes me what a trade-off the implementation of social democracy is. It does seem like they are correlated. In my experience working with some former European entrepreneurs, the startup problem isn’t really directly related to anything about social democracy or safety nets or even taxes. They talked about how difficult, painful, and risky it was for them to start and operate a company at every turn. Even things like bankruptcy and allowing founders to move on with their lives if their startup fails, which we take for granted here, are not a given in European countries. It’s not just the government to blame. The private banking and even societal norms are very different in ways that we don’t even consider in the United States. The US is very friendly to funding and building startups. I didn’t appreciate it until talking to ex-founders from various European countries as well as many founders here who explicitly left EU countries for America because they wanted to start a company.
- awongh 2y ago
  But these societal norms and conservatism are the reasons why it's politically possible to implement social democracy, right? I agree that it's not as simple as "regulation" and "taxes"- it's more fundamental than that. Which is why I think it'll so so hard for the USA to implement a fair social health care system, even though it needs one so badly.
- dachworker 2y ago
  Bankruptcy law is a big one. Another big one is the reputation hit that you are going to incur if your startup fails. Europe does not believe in learning through failure. It is puzzling to a European, that there could be serial entrepreneurs with a history of 3 failed startups who still get funding for their fourth attempt.

Herring 2y ago

Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders.