[lurena]

I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted.

There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Not everyone among these 65 million is fit to 'move fast and break things'. Not everyone wants to be flexible, adaptable or able to sell themselves in a world of fast hires and firings. Not everyone is a young and dynamic entrepreneur full of 'innovative' ideas (whatever that means). In short, not everyone is a twenty-to-thirty- something with a moderately high level of education and relative affinity with the tech world.

On the other hand, everyone needs a steady job to make a living. Everyone needs the healthcare, retirement plans and other benefits our current labor laws entail with that steady job. In short, everyone is a human being with basic human needs.

Startups have one thing in common - they tend to fail. Maybe your average HN reader will be able to endure the typical working conditions with no guarantee of a stable income in the future, but they are the exception, not the rule. It is preposterous to imagine that an entire country's labor laws and regulation should align with the needs of such a narrow demographic so that foreign investors will maybe deign to notice it and shower said demographic with money.

Yes, there are many things wrong with our current labor laws. Yes, maybe some regulations are needlessly tight and stifle the growth of blooming startups full of bright people. No, that does not mean the US as a 'startup nation' is an example to follow. And if that means the next Facebook or Instagram won't come from here, so be it. Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them.

[megalomanu]

As a french I'm accustomed with this point of view, but I think it is too often based on a false vision of what is France and what does french people truly want. France has not always been the country you describe. Even if France never leaded the french revolution and always been more attracted to the philosophical or political side of things, France hosted a lot of technical revolutions and even be part of a "startup culture" in some domains, like automobiles. I invite you to read the bio of Louis Renault or André Citroën. They were true pionners and they share some life events and a mindset very similar to those of a web entrepreneur. Today, we tend to despise all those huge industrial automobile, food, or aviation companies that didn't really innovate anymore, and it's normal because they're symptomatic of the collusions between state and business, but we forget too often that they started like startups, at a time it was possible to make of a small company in a disruptive domain a true unicorn. And many of these companies are the root of the social rights we beneficiate today. If we can't build new big companies anymore, our social system (which I'm fond of by the way) is doomed. I believe France was at this time much more confident with technological progress. Maybe because time was more hopeful, company management more patriarcal, inequalities where less important, and examples of bad conduct from great companies less visible. Anyway. But the roots of innovation are still here, and on the contrary, all the social regulations are not necessarily a true part of what a complex country like France means to be. We must find the balance.

(By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)

[woodpanel]

We must find the balance.

I think so too. Not being French but reducing France to just being France if it keeps it's inefficiencies is what made it take the role of "Europe's sick man" from Germany.

As if having a permanent base of 20% unemployed youth (and 10% in general) is a price worth the cost of being a "well-meaning" nation.

PS: And no, youth unemployment is not a new thing in France as it stood around 27% in 1997. Pre-Euro and Pre-German-Labor-Reforms.

[toomuchtodo]

As an American, kudos for appreciating what keeps your country on solid footing, versus a culture that is essentially a lottery with more flash.

[megalomanu]

France is a combination between Philippe le Bel, Zinedine Zidane, Louis Renault, Serge Gainsbourg, Marcel Dassault, Jean Jaurès, Auguste Renoir, Blaise Pascal, Napoléon, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles de Gaulle, and so on. Current social rights are not more a part of french culture than anything else and I think most of the current conflicts come from the thinking than progress is acquired and a marxist point of view (which is very valid and important, but not the source of all answers). We tend to forget than France existed before 1945.

[jdminhbg]

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[maeln]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.

[geezerjay]

> 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.

The only objective number mentioned in wikipedia's article is 43 million, but apparently that figure appears to be made up, as it is based on a single citation of an obscure and unavailable document published by an organization that calls itself Talk Poverty.

Nevertheless, even if we take that 43 million number at face value, that means that OP's exaggerated number would have an absurd margin of error of around 50%.

[imdutch]

Cry me a river.

It's data from the US Census Bureau, it took me 7 seconds to find the correct reference: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

It does not matter the guess was a bit off, the argument still stands.

[IanCal]

I think the "most abject poverty seen in the developed world" needs citing.

[erikb]

Funny how Americans get so shocked about it, while it is quite clear to the rest of the world. Honestly when I was visiting the US the first time, I was shocked how Second World everything was. Most people live in poor areas (of course most well off Americans don't travel to these part of towns so they don't see it). Many non-chain shops are struggling. Food prices are ridiculously high in comparison to the not that much higher pay Americans receive for the same job. Even the electricity system looks somewhat like Vietnam or India.

[skookumchuck]

When I travel in Europe I see significantly higher prices for food than in the US.

[IanCal]

I'm neither American, nor shocked at the idea that America has poverty. I am, however, a bit of a stickler actual information. Pointing to general issues does absolutely nothing to help source this claim.

The claim was that ~65M people were in "who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world."

The actual figure for a poverty measure is 43M. However, that's not what the claim was - it's not simply that people are in poverty but those that are are in "the most abject poverty seen in the developed world".

Either we can find actual information and have a real discussion, or we can throw around vague unsourced claims and get nowhere.

[adventured]

That's false. France has a higher cost of living and higher food prices [1], with a considerably lower overall median and full-time median income level, versus the US. US GDP per capita is also currently 50% higher than France. France has an unemployment rate ~120% higher than in the US. US wage growth has been roughly 8x to 10x that of France over the last 20 years (France only averaged 0.5% annual wage growth over that time).

So let's recap. France has: far lower median wages, far lower wage growth, a higher poverty rate, a higher homelessness rate, dramatically lower GDP per capita, and an economy that hasn't net expanded in over a decade.

In 1980 France had a higher GDP per capita than the US. In 1990 France was just barely behind the US on GDP per capita. Today it's about $40,000 vs $60,000; that gap is persistently widening, with France falling down the global economic ladder by the year. It also explains why wage growth has been so extremely low in France over that time.

[1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...

[imdutch]

Please mind the difference exchange rates make, otherwise comparisons over time are meaningless. France it's GDP per capita was not higher in 1980, the relative gap was similar to today.

Furthermore, median wage growth has done much better there than in the US over that period. Also poverty rates are set by national standards not international, they're hard to compare unless when it's between EU members for example.

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5668ba742340f8b1008b4...

[llcoolv]

If you wonder why your comment got downvoted, let me come with a quick answer.

"The level of discourse you're pursuing isn't tolerated on HN. It should come as no surprise to you that no one is engaging with you- that is, of course unless you're being serious...in which case I feel dreadfully sorry for you."

:D :D :D

But don't worry. This weekend I will start a HN-Exiles invite only alternative and there would be only creators and no "priests". It is obvious that coexistence is no longer an option.

[markvdb]

Here are some numbers (even if I'm not sure about the use of comparing # of people in France and # of Americans in poverty):

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-un...

TLDR: Depending on the criteria, 12.7%/43.1 million or 14%/47.5 million Americans are living in poverty. About half of which in abject poverty (under 50% of the poverty level).

[briandear]

And this attitude is precisely why I just moved from France to Silicon Valley. I want to be around people interested in creating the future rather than recycling the past.

[Zealotux]

What kind of future, though? Don't take this the wrong way, but to me Silicon Valley seems like the most hypocritical and cynical place in the developed world today. Just take a look at the social issues and inequalities in the area, but I think you're already aware of that.

The false dilemma of Silicon Valley being the only possible model to "create the future" sounds like a classic pompous Valley view, maybe the US can afford part of a state to be like that, I don't know if I want that for France. And this is coming from someone who made a startup in France, and is currently working in the industry.

[ryanx435]

" Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them."

says the commenter on Hacker news, without a single ounce of irony.

[adventured]

> There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.)

Your claim about American poverty is beligerently false. The US poverty rate is below both the French [1] and Canadian [2] poverty rates. It's also below the rates of poverty in Spain and Italy.

France also has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. There are 550,000 homeless in the US, that's a rate of 1.7 per 1,000. France has 140,000 homeless persons, a rate of 2 per 1,000. The French homelessness problem has been increasing dramatically (a 1/2 increase since 2001), while the US rate of homelessness has been persistently declining for decades.

The French poverty rate is ~14%.[1] The US rate in 2016 was 12.7%, and will probably hit near or below 12% in 2018 at the rate it has been falling [3].

The rate of US poverty has seen a large improvement over the last 30 or so years (as one example, childhood poverty has been nearly cut in half since the early 1970s). It routinely goes unheralded, however government / welfare programs targeted at reducing poverty have been tremendously successful.

[1] https://www.thelocal.fr/20160907/over-14-percent-of-the-fren...

[2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/census-children-make-up-one-qu...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/12/550492811/u-s-census-bureau-r...

[3a] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-25...

[emmanuel_1234]

I don't think this makes a lot of sense. Poverty line is defined as < 60% of median income. Median income in France is heavily influenced by the minimum wage income. As a consequence, anyone working part time will be considered under the poverty line.

And in France, making less than 60% of median wage certainly doesn't make you rich, but you still get access to basic need (healthcare, even housing in some cases).

I'd rather be piss-poor in France than in the US.

[geezerjay]

> Poverty line is defined as < 60% of median income.

Therefore that indicator doesn't reflect poverty, it only reflects income inequality. Income inequality has absolutely no impact on your ability to meet your basic needs or even having disposable income.

Just because your neighbor can afford to buy a boat it doesn't mean you're suddenly on food stamps.

[nikanj]

The poor in France still have access to education, healthcare, etc. These rates are not comparable.

[perl4ever]

Are you denying the existence of public education, Medicaid, etc. in the US?

[JPLeRouzic]

In French media (newspaper, TV), it is usual to state there is no medicaid, nor medicare in US ("pas de sécurité sociale, pas de retraite").

I guess it is a way to make people to not complain, because...

* The widely praised "sécurité sociale" does not reimburse much and nearly nothing for common health problems and not everybody has acces to it. The CMU was voted in France only in 1999 when Medicare exists since 1965.

* Every employee pay for a "mutuelle" (it is mandatory by law!) even if employees pay already high taxes for the "sécurité sociale".

* As for the "retraite" (medicare) most young people will get only half of what people like me receives, because of a convergent string of laws that were initiated 25 years ago.

[adventured]

70 million people in the US get free healthcare via Medicaid + CHIP. That nearly covers 2x the poverty rate.

[gaius]

move fast and break thing

Especially now we are seeing what that really means: fake blood labs and the brakes on cars disabled. Do we want a world where nothing can be trusted because it was all just a fantasy to defraud gullible investors to start with? I think most people don’t want that.

[perl4ever]

I don't think it's reasonable to reject some vague concept of American style capitalism based on Theranos and Uber any more than it would be to reject "German-style" capitalism based on Dieselgate.