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by x0rg 2821 days ago
I can tell you my story: I tried for years to stay in Italy and work there (it's my home country). As a software engineer I had to work 70 hours per week with no way to get a decent job for a salary between 20-30k euros (gross). When I severely burned out, I found the strength to leave the country and found a completely different work culture in Germany.

This to say: I'm not sure Italians will ever turn it around, still I sometimes think it would be nice to come back and try to change things, but it is incredibly hard given that most of the young people there either leave, they accept shitty jobs or have the same mentality of their parents.
1 comments
Eug894 2821 days ago 

  Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him:
  "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city; in ten years the railroad will have taken
  the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and
  improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any
  higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you,
  "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the
  value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." And if, under such circumstances, you
  take his advice, you need do nothing more. You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like 
  the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon or down a hole in the ground;
  and without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you 
  will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be 
  an almshouse.
I would add: "Or get some intellectual property everyone must buy." /s
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Eug894 2821 days ago
Oh, I am neither against IP, nor in favor of buy-out of all natural resources. I just think it would be good if each IP had reasonable price [0] and everyone had a land for subsistence.

[0] Not like that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electron....

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