Germany is actively killing innovation. I propose to stop for starters.
Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital health cards were introduced.
Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest.
Your other points are more or less true, I just like to think that people complain a lot and media obviously makes it worse.
Digital health cards, online tax declaration, etc. These things did happen. People complained, but these decisions were not reverted. That's the most important.
> Not sure how Germany is actively killing innovation to be honest
By many things at once: Datenschutz, (over- and premature) regulations, bureaucracy, laws favoring old ways (e.g. broadcasting licenses for streamers), active sabotage from workers who don't want to learn things (and can't be fired) etc.
But all stems from risk averseness and active unwillingness to learn new ways.
As you say, (some) things did happened, but way too slow and way too little. Compared to its peers or especially developing countries German Digitalisierung is a joke, a not so funny one.
That's all good and well, but the very time you would try to start selling your tinkering, or, God forbid, hire somebody - that's where the hell begins.
Being a self-employed is a living hell in Germany, as well as receiving any money outside of employment. Esp. if money are small (but > than hobby money, 500 euro iirc) and don't justify the hurdle of dealing with Finanzamt, tax pre-payment, possible regulations with upfront Formulars etc.
> comprehensive public transportation infrastructure, universal healthcare without administrative bloat, and urban planning that prioritizes livability over speculation.
This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German infrastructure is a shitshow.
Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
As someone who lived in multiple rich countries in Europe, let me tell you that the German healthcare system is awesome. It has a lot of problems, but it's head and shoulders above many-many other countries. You can actually get care by a qualified doctor, while this is absolutely not self-evident even in rich countries like the United Kingdom, and let's not talk about CEE countries.
I would disagree. German doctors regularly prescribe homeopathic medicine, misdiagnose patients and tell people they just need to drink tea, and also will not supply medicine when it is really needed. This is well researched.
Saying you can not get care by a qualified doctor in the UK is a completely false statement.
> This can't be further from the truth. This is probably written by an American, and US is a very car-centric, but German infrastructure is a shitshow.
I just know that this is a comment from a German person who has little experience with public transport in any non-top-class country. Yeah, it could be better, but it could also be so much worse.
> Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy
I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries. Even in Georgia trains are way more punctual, than in Germany. Moscow metro works like a Swiss-clock compared to U-Bahn/S-Bahn.
Maybe what you are talking about is true for some very pour Asian/African countries, but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin. Not to mention developed ones and China.
> I lived in Russia, Georgia, few European countries
I've been to Central America, Egypt, Istanbul, Sicily, Spain and many more candidates that take a more lax attitude to daily life. Their public transport could certainly be better.
> but many middle-income countries have more reliable public transportation, than Berlin
Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is badly run, constantly out of money (especially for infrastructure) and very different than the rest. Still, inner city public transport is generally reliable, if dirty and sometimes full of questionable people.
What do you consider a non-top-class country? Is your statement just tautologically true, because any country with better public transit then germany would be considered top-class?
>Also healthcare is absolutely stiffled by bureaucracy. I have a friend who is a cardiologist. He says that exactly half of his work time is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but German paperwork, where you manually type PDF fields one by one, then print, then sign, then scan and so on.
Wait. That's exactly how paperwork has always worked for me in America. What am I missing?
This reads as FUD. I'm an American who's lived in Germany recently. On every measure, my experience was been better than the US.
I can walk to the grocery. Or ride a bike. Or take the bus. Or take the train into the city. There are options in transport and in the stores. Never, ever had those options in the States.
Yes, I've had some doctors I didn't care for. So I found another one and they've been great. Same thing happens in the States. You must advocate for yourself. Nothing different.
The big difference is the complete lack of fear going in because you know you won't have to pay an arm and a leg. And yes, it's not "free". It comes out of your paycheck. 110% better. Never had to wait an excessive time, even for specialists. No more than in the States; you schedule it out. Yet, I can go to the emergency room when there's a concern and be greeted with compassion and receive care. So much better, it's hard to convey and hard for Americans to believe. I didn't until I lived there.
As for "digitalization", yeah, it'd be nice to submit some forms online rather than through paper. But it's not a big deal. Howwver, it's super nice to talk to human beings on the phone! Haven't run into too many "your call is very important to us. Please listen as our menu may have changed" and then have to deal with a 1kbsp mega compressed audio line. Also, while I've had bad experiences with clerks, many more have been very patient and gracious. Again, contrast that to the DMV. Not much difference.
Doctors in the US also deal with tons of paper work...has your friend also worked in the States?
> Unfortunately many new developers don't believe in powerful "power" tools anymore.
I have to use IntelliJ due to Kotlin codebase, but I'm still more of a fun of Emacs and I don't like Idea that much. I think IDEs somewhat lack the power that simpler tools have, which is automation.
One thing I miss from IntelliJ is programmability. That's why I still use Emacs on workplace for anything outside of Kotlin (git, grepping, note-taking etc). I even edit code in Emacs from time to time when it's easier to write a Lisp function which will batch edit code than doing keyboard macro.
Another thing I'm missing from IntelliJ is determinism. Everything is asynchronous, so the same combinations of actions can lead to different results, making automatisation painful.
IntelliJ is very programmable, but it can be a bit intimidating because out of the box it assumes that you want to program it by creating plugins. That's very different to the elisp REPL driven approach. LivePlugin bridges the gap by letting you control the IDE from a repl-like console, building up scriptlets that use the same plugin APIs. There are examples for how to do things like add menu items, explore the semantic PSI trees, trigger refactorings or do whatever else you want to do.
- Tracks the mode globally (rather than per editor), and treats mode-switching as an edit operation (so if you accidentally enter a read-only tab in insert mode then you need to switch to another tab, escape, and then go back to get your keybinds back.
- Doesn't bind escape in sidebar dialogs, so trying to exit insert mode in a terminal or commit dialog just defocuses the sidebar instead
- Still applies its other binds, so even falling back to CUA/IntelliJ keybinds doesn't work either!
- Makes no effort to integrate IntelliJ keybinds, all you get for conflicts is "would you like to lose the Vim or IntelliJ functionality that binds this key?"
The difference is stark when you compare it to something like Evil that actually values the user experience. (How's that for an irony?)
That's a strange historical revisionism in Ukraine. Traditionally, Rus history is considered to begin with Ladoga, then Rurik moved to Novgorod, and only later his successors moved to Kiev.
Saying that one true Rus is Kiev and not Novgorod or Moskow is rather a modern Ukrainian national myth. All and neither were true Rus.
If Paris agreements cannot prevent tariffs on Chinese EV and Chinese solar panels, which are basically battling climate change on Chinese money, these agreements don't justify the cost of paper they are written on.
Like where? UK system is collapsing under underfunding and misallocation, German system is crumbling under terrible lack of personell with raising (already high) costs with lowering quality and increasing waiting times (up to infinite where mamologs and psychiatrists simply take no new patients in many cities).
Basically in all thirst world countries trend is negative unless and experience is frustrating unless you are rich with good private coverage. At least that's my experience.
The NHS structurally basically has to get worse no matter who is in charge:
- the cost of top healthcare will keep going up as new technology is invented
- the amount of care you need keeps going up as the population ages
- GDP can't grow because of various political constraints (Brexit, planning permission, Green Belt, environmental rules, etc)
- Tax revenue can't rise much because it's already ~40% of GDP
- NHS can't grow as a percentage of the budget because of competing commitments (pension triple lock must, in the long run, grow as a percentage of GDP)
I'm sure Labour and Starmer want to fix the NHS, but it's like trying to play chess when you're already mated.
It is same with housing where US housing market is supposedly worse compared to Asia, Europe, Australia or anywhere. Despite clear evidence that housing is increasingly more expensive all over the world. In places where people don't earn half or one-third of US, homes are sometimes more expensive than US. And there is no NIMBYism or bad regulations there to cause high prices.
I would argue that people in academia or other tightly coupled bubbles where your career and thus well-being are far more reliant on how your peers evaluate you (especially in humanities where peer reviews are nearly the sole factor of success) is far more tribalist than a typical blue-collar or office environment.
That's just a lot of words to dismiss academia as an ivory tower, and to ad hominem leftism as being part of the ivory tower, which is a bad argument.
It is true that the academic clerisy is a problem and a few leftists actually argue that this social class is a block on social progress. However, sometimes their ideas are right, ranging from the sciences to social justice issues, such as racism and sexism and so on.
Nothing they said dismisses academia as an ivory tower anymore than anyone pointing out how ridiculously pervasive the replication crisis is dismisses academia or ad hominems leftism as untrustworthy.
There is no need to be defensive when how perverse the incentive structure for academia is, is pointed out. You can be a diehard leftist and also hate the present day institutions of academia.
Disagree, previous commenter specifically said - paraphrase - "Academia (researchers) is MORE tribal (≈ incentive structured) than companies (office and blue-collar workers)".
This specific, comparative argument is used by industry and conservatives to undermine academics and progressives, it is very prevalent on Hacker News when they shit on academics. It has zero to do with the replication crisis which you mentioned, or "publish-or-perish", or the neoliberalization of academia - which as an ex-academic leftist I am very well aware of and have been materially harmed by it.
There is a nuanced distinction between the two forms of argument. The former is a prevalent bad take on Hacker News by folks who unilaterally shit on academia, saying things like "industry is actually more innovative" and other half-baked nonsense like that.
Sorry but I find your example totally wrong. Things like radio frequencies and space launches are hard regulated by govs, no corporation can launch satellites at will without permission from the government(s).
> What's the best way to become informed about a topic?
If that question exist, the answer is: be ignorant. If you are involved into the topic, you will be pretty informed. So the question is: should you be involved into the topic in he first place. If true, you go to the Uni, join NGO, join related job or research program and get informed pretty quickly, otherwise it's not worthy. Besides, with contemporary media all you can hope for is getting misinformed.
Tho when the median voter is 55 and national motto is "that's how it was always done" and "Pensions are secure" - I don't put much hope. I still remember the outcry when the digital health cards were introduced.