thomascarney

I mean, I would agree. The EU courts have ruled pretty much every cross-border data sharing agreement with the US as illegal (e.g. Safe Harbour ruling eight years ago). The EU Commission considered that data transfers to US were not compliant back in 2000, which led to the Safe Harbour in the first place.

Despite all of this, we haven't seen any creation of an EU internet, and even in this latest ruling, they've suspended the ruling until they hope the new system comes into place that will allow cross-border data transfers to the US.

The point being that politically, there is no desire in the EU to cut themselves off from the US internet as you see in China, Russia, etc.

Politically, stopping data transfers to the US is not viable, because it would impact the deal between the EU and the USA (US covers EU defence for access to the EU common market).

For this reason, I don't think we'll ever see a Chinese-style expulsion of US tech companies from the EU.

Therefore, we've seen over a decade of a dance between the judiciary banning data transfers to the US (Safe Harbor ruling, etc) and then politicians overturning these rulings before it actually impacts anything.

In the case of health insurance, AFAIK the subsidies are the government paying on behalf of people who are insured but don't pay in (children, spouses out of the labour market, unemployed - "versicherungsfremde Leistungen") and amounts to about 14 billion out of the 280 billion paid in via employees.

My point is that we don't have "free healthcare" over here in Germany, as Americans often think. We pay in 15% of our income up to the limit into health insurance and we get ok, no-frills healthcare (shared rooms in hospitals, waiting times in big cities to see specialists) relatively equally distributed to the population.

German education systems scores slightly worse than US's system on the 2018 PISA score for what it is worth.

We have get healthcare, disability pensions, pensions and care via insurance in Germany. They aren't provided via government budgets.

If you earn enough or you are self employed, you can in some case opt out of the public insurances, and get private insurance.

I'm not sure what is dishonest about what I said.

My point is that the German system is not a magical system of free healthcare. Rather, it's financially backed by charging a considerable chunk of earnings.

As a side note, the idea that the employer pays 50% of the contribution is a political slight of hand - an employee's labor covers 100% of the health insurance payment.

It's fairly good coverage without frills (i.e. you get a shared room in the hospital). Doctors tend to de-prioritize public insurance when giving appointments, because they earn less from them, particularly for elective or non-urgent issues, so you usually have to wait a bit longer than privately insured patients.

On the other hand, the insurance costs ~15% of income with a cap, so it has an element of solidarity to it - if you earn less, you pay less, and children and non-working spouse get covered without extra cost.

In Germany, my wife and I pay together about ~2,000 USD per month for public health insurance. It's not cheap!

SPD (center-left leaning party) has been junior partners in every one but one of those conservative governments.

German politics are also very collaborative/compromise driven, so it's a mistake to think the outcome would have been drastically different, had we had a SPD/Green coalition rather than a CDU/SPD coalition the last 16 years.

This is especially the case, given that parts of the SPD were and continue to be on Russian payroll.

Ultimately, renewables are very challenging from a technical perspective for a densely populated country with energy intensive industries and limited offshore wind options.

Nuclear was 30% of the electricity generation back in 2000.

The Nordstream projects were conceived to allow Russia to exert force on Eastern European countries without endangering supply of gas to Germany.

Our energy policy has been incredibly short-sighted, focused on maximizing certain sector's economic interests at the expense of national security and EU security.

I think mercantile is the more appropriate adjective.

It was cynical politicians and industrialists who sold the population on a clean energy revolution, all while banking on cheap Russian gas to actually deliver the energy required.

You can choose both the law and forum in many types of commercial agreements. Typically international contracts will choose English law as the governing law.

Ireland's first language is Irish, not English. Ireland has done pretty well embracing English as its operating language.

I think a broader question for the EU is whether ever greater integration is possible without some standardization around a common "admin" language.

Having lived in several EU countries, I love learning new languages, but it does make day-to-day life much harder, not to mention more complex topics such as starting companies.

It's conceivable that Germany could introduce English an official second language (having multiple official languages is common in the EU), even if just for certain sections of legal life.

At the end of the day, EU citizens have fairly robust rights to live and work in other EU countries, so it's not a privilege. Providing ways for those people to integrate better into the legal systems would be beneficial to creating a more unified Europe.

Even after 6 months, typical compensation for being fired is 2 weeks of salary for every year worked. For most startup employees, this won't be a huge amount, given they have often only worked a few years.

I would argue it's fair to say that the current regulations were formulated with the intent to restrict the activities of tech companies.

At the same time, though, you might see the problem of having the government collect data on religion (even if safeguards are in place today).

Tomorrow the AfD might be in power, and they might use that data for purposes beyond those envisioned today.

More broadly, I feel, while great to restrict tech companies, there are also very real dangers from the state collecting data.

Germany still requires that you register your residence, name, age and religion within two weeks of moving to a new place.

Often, you even have to provide proof from a landlord that you do live there.

The German obsession with privacy has a LOT to do with making life difficult for tech companies, rather than the privacy of its citizens per say.

There's an expression to describe this growth (quite typical for SaaS companies): The Long, Slow SaaS Ramp of Death, coined by Gail Goodman here: http://businessofsoftware.org/2012/10/gail-goodman-the-long-...

You can also check lots of different SaaS companies at https://baremetrics.com/open to see their growth rates. Most are fairly linear.