[hogFeast]

Look at the data. Even within the EU, Germany is behind the level you would expect based on every indicator (institutions, education, productivity, etc.).

And this is basically a function of Germany's economic development. Germany industrialised quickly by extracting from consumers. Forced savings, cheap loans to entrepreneurs, etc. The model isn't optimised for competition and new entry.

Germany hasn't really moved on from that point. Industry and banking is still heavily concentrated (the level of corporatism is far beyond anything outside of East Asia). Capital markets still don't really exist (amazingly, given current ECB policy). Consumers are still paying a massive surplus over to the corporate sector (through low wages and forced saving).

Rocket Internet is the kind of exception that proves the rule. They were successful but only by doing something totally inexplicable in any other context (i.e. their shareholding model is a function of the awful state of finance in Germany).

Definitely, the govt have trying very hard on this for a while. But with no real results because the model seems to produce what voters want. There are signs that things are coming apart (particularly in banking) but before that point, nothing will change. It just makes no sense to compare Germany to an entrepreneurial society, that has never been the goal.