[3xblah]

As I read the parent comment, the point is not that Andreesen could singlehandedly make a difference with his investments. The point is that his words do not match his actions. His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit and, in the case of companies like Facebook, not having to pay taxes on their profits.

[mattmanser]

I always get a bit conflicted with Marc Andreessen stuff.

Like this article starts out with a bold claim that's...wrong.

Germany have done well. A western country has done well. Elephant in the room, massive 80 million person country, major western power, and the American claims no-one's done a good job because the US hasn't.

And then he goes into talking about having pre-prepared therapies or a vaccine. Again, we already have to an extent. You can't make a vaccine before the virus exists, but you can have a way of rapidly making one. We do have pre-prepared vaccines, like this one:

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-27-oxford-covid-19-vaccine-...

Perhaps, again, he's just talking about the US?

[xal10]

Perhaps the medical system works better in Germany than in the U.S., but the rest of the article's points stand:

- Rents are sky high, and the landowners and people in power have no intention of changing that. In fact, they import more people at any opportunity in order to increase the size of the industrial reserve army and push up rents.

- Germany has no substantial capacity of manufacturing simple goods like masks.

- While Germany still has manufacturing, the middle and lower classes are exploited and relatively poor.

But people get what they vote for.

[intended]

This is news to me that the German middle and Lower classes are relatively poor.

Who is this in comparison to?

Could you share where you got this info?

[simonsarris]

I think its a very big mistake to attempt to quantify quality of life with the numbers below but I could see how someone could try to make the case that Germany is relatively poor vs the USA:

Germans are taxed much higher than people in the US: A tax rate of 42% on income over 57K euros, vs 22% in the US (and the US bracket tops out at 37% for 500K USD). Gross national income is lower, 54K in Germany vs vs 63K for USA (though still quite good). Other sites peg Germany as 82% the purchasing power of the US, though less cost of living. Yet many durable goods are much more expensive in Germany. Cars are ~28% more expensive, gas is more expensive, electronics are more expensive: iPad in the US costs $800 vs $950 in Germany. Utilities are 56% more expensive in Germany, clothing 40% more expensive.

Some stats: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Germany/Un...

[mattm]

I also thought this as well reading the introduction. Canada has less than 1/2 the number of cases and deaths on a per capita basis than the US so they are doing twice as well as the US in handling this.

[friedman23]

> His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit

His work doesn't foster this. Being able to sell a product that has nearly infinite margins will naturally be more profitable than the alternative.

> not having to pay taxes on their profits.

The government has enough tax revenue, how about they stop spending it on pointless wars and destruction.

[simonh]

Fine up until the last cheap shot. None of those conflicts were wanted or started by the US. Saddam invaded Kuwait, the Taliban enabled 9/11, Assad provoked a civil war in Syria.

Disengaging always makes things worse. After the ‘Surge’ in Iraq the US tried to pull out and what happened? ISIS. The US pulled out of north Syria and our (talking broadly, I’m a Brit) allies the Kurds got massacred and thousands of ISIS prisoners got loose again. Walking away doesn’t work, we tried that with Afghanistan, just leaving it to the Taliban after the Soviets pulled out, and they came after us in New York anyway. It’s a small world whether we like it or not, and we’re in it together.