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0 pointsAndyMcConachie3y ago0 comments

Fine. Promoting innovation as an ideologiy has become camouflage for mass exploitation. Most 'innovation' that happens in SV is either advertising nonsense or so new trick to avoid labor laws.

I've lived in both the USA and The Netherlands and I now live in The Netherlands. I recently had to renew my Dutch driver's license and the entire process so painless and quick. Compared to my experiences doing the same thing in both Virginia and California it was a lovely breeze. That's progress. That's innovation.

Don't even get me started on the byzantine nonsense that is the IRS versus the Belastingdienst. I'll take the Belastingdienst any day.

Americans wouldn't know real innovation if a walkable neighborhood arrived on a highspeed train and began eliminating healthcare bureaucracy.

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sofixa3y ago· 2 in thread

> Americans wouldn't know real innovation if a walkable neighborhood arrived on a highspeed train and began eliminating healthcare bureaucracy.

Thanks for the laugh, beautifully put.

In general I agree with your point, Americans hyperfocus on certain types of innovation (reinventing this or that wheel, "revolutionising X", like every single bullshit "reinventing transportation" "like a train, but much worse" proposal out there), mistake everything else for lack of innovation, and totally miss the forrest for the trees. New and different stuff is celebrated, even if it's an obvious disaster in the making for most involved (e.g. Uber destroying labour protections, Airbnb putting immense pressure on already stressed housing markets, idiots reinventing trains but worse with "pods").

Meanwhile American companies are drastically behind in many niches (airplanes, cars, trains, railroad companies, cosmetics, etc.), but you don't hear Americans complain for their lack of innovation. But when anything EU is mentioned "innovation is dead, Deutsche Telekom is so old and just sucking Brussels money". When Intel gets subsidies to manage to catch up to the competition because they stagnated it's strategic, but when EU funds go for anything it's handouts propping up failing industries.

robertlagrant3y ago

I think the big difference is the US is customer-focused, and the EU is employee-focused.

To be stereotypical: in the US organisations exist to provide value people choose to pay for (e.g. electric cars; cheap rocketry; cheaper accommodation for travel; cheaper and much more convenient taxis); in the EU they exist to employ people, and hopefully they provide value, but if they don't provide much it's fine because it's pretty difficult to start a competitor anyway.

sofixa3y ago

> I think the big difference is the US is customer-focused, and the EU is employee-focused

I think this is simply untrue. US is profit focused above all, customer experience be damned. If you need examples, check Boeing killing people to get a plane out as soon as possible with ridiculously bad engineering choices; railroad companies skimping on decades old safety tech to keep profits as high as possible; healthcare being the quagmire that it is; massive companies posting record profits while laying off employees en masse; extremely customer hostile practices like like selling customer data everywhere; abusive pricing models on basic infrastructure like internet and mobile; etc. etc.

The only segment I can think about where you can legitimately say "customer-focused" is in hospitality, and that's only because employees have to, them getting any money depending directly on customers being very happy. For me it's to annoying extents though.

> in the EU they exist to employ people, and hopefully they provide value, but if they don't provide much it's fine because it's pretty difficult to start a competitor anyway.

Also disagree. That's not how things work, even in flag airlines, let alone private companies. And no, it's not difficult to start a competitor outside of capital-intensive market segments, which is the same everywhere.

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