bobl

-

> Also, I think it's pretty disingenuous to claim that large companies like Apple or Microsoft got big because they didn't pay taxes in Europe.

I didn't, that is another story. I am saying that they had an easier time than they should have competing with and acquiring any European competition by effectively having a ~30% advantage and discount.

> They were big domestically. They were even significant internationally. Just not nearly enough to match US companies.

They all except Spotify got acquired before they could potentially become big companies. If you want to have large companies with thousands of employees in Europe they have to survive as domestic companies. Spotify had potential to become one, but at that point the Stockholm housing market was already in a bubble. https://www.ft.com/content/bdf04bc2-6a0f-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea0...

I don't generally think it is that big a concern. You are unlikely to outwork people, especially with something like 20%. Or more specifically there are always people with less to lose than you do. It isn't something that European countries can compete by, and especially not smaller countries. I think greater concerns are systematic defect. But there is no meaning to have a lack of education, apartments or other things that would mean good conditions for being productive. Those are the things you can't afford as a smaller country that wants to be competitive.

The example of the highway system was more for its time. Europe did, and has, just as the US built a lot of infrastructure over the years. But it is still lackluster in many places.

Though the real lack of conversion isn't in one specific thing, it is that Europe (and probably much of the world for that matter) can't offer people good opportunities. I hope I am too gloomy. It is just a hard argument to make that in terms of life prospects it wasn't better to be young ten years ago than it is today in many places.

If people believe that someone else won't come and eat their lunch over that I think they are wrong. As I alluded to in another comment, Europe probably lost at least half of the tech industry it could have had if it wasn't for capital going into things like rents.

I people were expecting things to get better they wouldn't essentially hold back growth. We would see new rapid affordable development because not doing that would be losing out. But I don't see countries being concerned about that. They are perfectly happy taking decades building things and going over budget. They let mortgages double or triple, so everyone who came before win at the expense of those coming after. They sell companies with valuable technology are to foreign interests.

So I don't really understand how someone e.g. would end up working less when they have twice the mortgage than their parents and the companies they work for are owned foreign investors who wouldn't mind moving activities abroad at any point.

And to that point almost all major successful companies are vertically integrating today, because with information being accessible there isn't much reason not to control your own activities. Yet, most European countries are doing the opposite. Outsourcing their main activities to complex constellations.

I am not so much concerned about growth as such, but about European countries inability to convert progress into prosperity.

This might not be the best example, but take cars. A country like the US would build a interstate highway system, probably subsidize car manufacturing and go on to create a huge factor of progress for decades to come. You have successfully converted technological progress into a meaningful factor for society. While in a less developed country only the rich will have cars and roads will be broken. Of course these days that era is coming to an end.

The same is true for other things that are progressing. Yet, in few to no European countries would you expect that the fundamentals of the information age like education, health care, housing, infrastructure and work environment will get better and more accessible in the next ten years. At least not organically i.e. without a crash.

What you can say in most countries is that education is getting more competitive, health care more complex, housing less accessible, infrastructure more expensive and work environment less comfortable. This is people fighting each other trying to get whatever there is, not somewhere where people are preparing for the future as societies.

So the only conclusion I can make, while it certainly might not be the correct one, is that Europe is losing. Because if Europe was winning we would be investing in the future and getting it better. Unless we are just hopelessly arrogant, which doesn't bode well either.

I doesn't seem clear at this point whether re-usable will be significant for activities beyond earth orbit. Partly the excitement comes from being a workaround for humanities reluctance to spend money on space exploration. Believe what you want, but from what I can find this doesn't seem to be a significant part of what would e.g. make humanity interplanetary. At least not yet.

> [...] and a part of it is due to bad policies being enacted by the EU - most notably the EU VAT on digital services, the GDPR and now the Copyright directive.

These rules came into effect the last year or so, the "battle" for the tech industry was fought ten to twenty years ago. US companies all have had a huge advantage "only" being under the (at the time very criticized) DMCA while European companies had to abide by local laws, often in multiple jurisdictions. Large US companies also avoided paying the same taxes European companies had to, amassing large reserves for acquisitions of any successful European companies.

That Europe can't produce technology companies is false, at least to the same extent that applies to the US. They just either got outmaneuvered by large US entities, got acquired or ended up limited in their growth by things like housing. If you look at e.g. Sweden you have MySQL (eventually acquired by Oracle), Skype (eventually acquired by Microsoft), Minecraft (acquired by Microsoft), Spotify (public with many offices). Any of these companies could have been really big domestically, if it wasn't for it being hard to grow and easy to get bought.

These rules, whether you agree with them or not, should have been there 20 years ago so everyone had to play by the same rules.

As far as I understand there is still some time before humanity becomes interplanetary in any meaningful way, maybe even many generations. And what is going on so far these days is mostly about not regressing.

Essentially competitiveness. Countries that are, or at least aspires to be, competitive would be restricting foreign companies and invest in infrastructure. While Europe is doing the opposite. We are selling our companies and restricting the building of infrastructure.

And while you can point to specific examples, like startups, that are successful in Europe it is mostly an illustration of how much we are leaving on the table.

Europe is losing ~globalization and we are fighting over the scraps. Which European country do you think will be overall obviously better in ten years? And not in the sense that "everything gets better", but in the sense of having a high rate of success in converting progress to prosperity. I don't know of any.

While I do agree that land is different, sometimes I think the problem is that people see it as such. When housing markets rise people get rich, just like they do with e.g. stocks. The lack of affordability is a factor of inequality, and especially inequality in opportunities. That is why moving to a smaller cities isn't a solution for most people, because the problem is with opportunities which are appearing in cities and disappearing most everywhere else.

What annoys me about this sentiment is that I was never a hipster, or posh, or greedy. I got priced out from anything decent all the same, while my hipster friends got rich. People aren't flocking to cities because they are entitled, though some might be, but because there are no good alternatives in most countries.

At least in big cities it is almost never that people don't want to build more, but that:

1. Property owner do not want to see their quite significant loans, or investments, decrease in value. 2. Renters do not want to get priced out of the city, having to leave a good job and move their kids away from their friends.

In addition to that while seemingly intuitive in practice building doesn't seem to decrease costs. Presumably because:

3. Land owners and construction companies want to make as much money as possible.

Unless you can override these three groups, or get them to agree, it is a social issue and building more will make things worse. Look at the record from essentially every city that has been building. If just building more worked there would be good examples and the far majority isn't.

Most of these places would also just have a hard time "scaling" if they did managed to get people or business there. One successful or a couple of smaller startups might need at least a hundred people a year. So there really needs to be something special going on for that to work out.

Sweden probably has a slightly undeserved reputation in this area. These days mainly the financing is socialized, which is still something. The services themselves are privatized. So the quality can vary wildly depending on location and provider. Or even almost randomly. It is more similar to a capitalist system in that regard. I think maybe Norway or Finland might be better examples of countries offering egalitarian service today.

To be fair I think it is worse these days than it could be. Over the last 50 years or so Sweden developed a form of egalitarian individualism, which has made social interaction a bit peculiar. But today there is rising inequality which has turned some of that individualism into egoism. At the same time there are a lot of people moving in or out of cities, breaking up friend groups and leaving small towns to their faith. Swedes do quite well socially when it comes to things like non profit clubs. Now everyone is trying to be "international" which most Swedes aren't good at as they are far too concerned about what other people think.

You said that the other respondents standard might be different. I am saying that this is the range. What would be the approximate numbers (salary and central apartment), at your company for someone getting hired today, say with a couple of years out of school?

Not sure how I can be far off when I am presenting a range. One that isn't hard to justify for that matter.

Most developers will be making more than €3000 a month after taxes. The problem is usually housing and living costs. Both ranging from €500 to €1500 each, that is €1000 to €3000 total. If you are at the lower end you of course end up fairly cash wealth, at the other not so much. At the same time these days you would still, despite being in one of the more lucrative professions, struggle to acquire a central apartment, or a holiday home, which is largely only accessible to those who are already asset wealthy. Especially not without significant debt.

If you can find your way it isn't bad, but I wouldn't put Sweden above places Switzerland or The Netherlands these day in terms of a good deal. Which I would have five to ten years ago.

"A Swedish contraception app has been reported to authorities after 37 users got pregnant and had abortions."

https://www.thelocal.se/20180112/swedish-contraception-app-r...

Those places are far more average with for example small city centers and limited transportation. As such there are far more competition, and therefor places to consider, before selecting one of those options. Especially since you might end up living outside one of those cities. Smaller isn't necessarily easier either. Most of Sweden has a rental shortage and a pricey housing market. It is a systematic issue of abandoning the rental market in favor of 100+ year mortgages.

But if anyone know of a city in Sweden with accessible good living conditions and decent opportunities I would of course be happy to hear about it.

It is significantly harder to attain a high quality of life at decent cost in Stockholm these days. Especially since the housing market is high, but stalling, and there is a recession looming. Sweden pushing itself as a good home for startups seem to largely correlate with becoming a worse place to live in, and therefor to a large extent be posturing. There have also been more obviously successful startups in the past then there are now. Moving to Stockholm could still be the right move for some people, but I would advice looking at the situation carefully beforehand.

I think the confusion is largely between computer science, information systems, system sciences and management. Which are overlapping fields, but not necessarily practiced as such.

It seem like Finland to a larger extent is still interested in providing good conditions for its citizens, for example:

* Finland has one of the best school systems in the world. Sweden one of the most deregulated and is average in PISA rankings.

* Finland is one of the few western countries to build a new nuclear power plant. Sweden is set to instead use taxes to deal with climate change while the price of electricity is the highest in a decade.

* While this library was being built they have been arguing about building the privately funded Nobel Center in Stockholm for years.

Finland is also able to take decisions such as working against smoking. This is one of those "nanny state" public health things Nordic countries are known for. In Sweden there are half a dozen commercials for online casinos every commercial break on TV, on billboards and in all the online newspapers.

I can see why especially Stockholm would be alluring, but if you look at the housing market (or outside of Stockholm) it isn't as fun anymore.

Another nice quote:

'Oodi “fits very well into the Nordic story of how societies work,” Mr. Laitio said. “There are so few of us here, so we have to make sure everyone can develop to their fullest potential.”'

A perspective increasingly lost in Sweden.

Regardless if it is true, I unfortunately think Computer Sweden have been a bit naive here. They shouldn't be publish this specific information ~3 hours after the server was "locked down" (as they state in the article). This isn't a company like e.g. Google were correcting a mistake leaves them at "good security".

I touched upon this in my other comment. I don't think it is wrong to criticize, but there can't be meaningful change unless you actually allow yourself to address the problem. It is a bit hard to explain if you haven't experienced Swedish politics lately. I'll just give you some examples:

1. The same county awarded contracts for building a hospital were the cost ended up quadrupling to $6 billion more than initially expected. (They got reelected). https://www.thelocal.se/20180207/finance-minister-calls-for-...

2. There was a well publicized scandal a little more than a year ago were aggressive outsourcing ended up potentially exposing classified data. (Some politicians did have to quit, but only for handling situation poorly after the fact). https://www.thelocal.se/20170721/it-workers-in-other-countri...

3. "Sweden has had a quicker liberalisation than any other advanced economy in the world, in terms of privatisation and deregulation" https://www.thelocal.se/20120324/39864

4. Yet, "They were shocked to find that there is very little evaluation of the effects of the privatisation on Swedish society" https://www.thelocal.se/20110907/36006

5. And maybe the most glaring example of dysfunction, the housing market. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/swede... https://www.thelocal.se/20170518/housing-crisis-forces-recor... https://www.thelocal.se/20170828/the-story-of-swedens-housin...

There just isn't much of an expectation of control, or that issues will be dealt with, these days in Sweden. It is unlikely that there would be any meaningful change in this situation either. Any effective change will be off the table and they will continue to outsource without much oversight because that is the agenda. Which is largely what has happened in other areas.

I just wanted to add, if I came across as criticizing, that I do agree with you. I do think the county is at fault. I do think people should expect more. I am just not seeing people doing that.

Sweden was never perfect, but some of its reputation as a functional country is not unfounded. Today we have many systems we know aren't working, yet little is being done. I have even heard Swedish political analysts being dumbfounded that some political issues were there are obvious flaws, and should be something that matters to people, don't show in the polls. I guess it might have to do with the political landscape, were there are a large number of people that very likely are dissatisfied. It just doesn't, because of the polarized situation, result in change. Instead it results in whatever is less objectionable, which is mostly whatever made the situation bad in the first place.

Anyway. I hope this incident get some more attention in Swedish media.

I would guess the server is run by the voip provider in Stockholm, which literally seems to be 1-3 contractors. Reading between the lines of the few articles published about the call center it seems like their business idea is to hire old nurses and not pay them very much.

https://www.voiceintegrate.com/se/support/vi-som-jobbar-h%C3...

You don't outsource, or 'privatize', because you want responsibility. In the pitch for the company in question they are stating how Stockholm has the lowest cost of all counties for this service [0]. Apparently that means outsourcing to a call center in Thailand [1]. Which in turn use some random provider [2].

It isn't really something hidden. In fact I would say that the whole idea is well supported by a significant part of voters who do not want government to do things, nor have restrictions on companies. If we limit the scope to just politics, Stockholm County had probably the most prominent scandal in the last couple of decades with Nya Karolinska, yet essentially lost no voters in the last election.

It is easy to blame politicians, the government or even companies. But at the end of the day there aren't enough people requesting quality or responsibility.

[0] https://www.medhelp.se/outsourcad-1177-tjänst-är-effektivast [1] http://www.medicall.nu/hem-1.aspx [2] https://www.voiceintegrate.com/se https://www.applion.se/