[igorkraw]

Startup failure is fine, not being accountable to your employees is what we have a problem with. The concept of the workers council in German law keeps throwing wrenches into the attempts to import the more exploitative business models from the US (N26 and Gorillas are recent cases) and Walmart completely flopped for related reasons. I do admire the business and entrepreneurship culture over the pond, but I think we can import the best bits of that without treating humans like fungible capital and burnout culture. It will just take a lot of time, especially in Germany (my native country), the business culture is still very conservative in the sense of rule based and authority/hierarchy oriented. I think if Germany adopted californias laws on non-competes and employee IP a lot would be gained already.

Notably, Sweden has a very robust social security network and a lot of entrepreneurship as well, the Swedes I talked to explicitly pointed to it as something that eased their way into taking risks.

[TTPrograms]

Are you implying that startup success in America requires exploitation of workers? I don't think most people would consider the management of early employees at successful startups to be "exploitative". Most of them are heavily incentivized.

There are specific issues with the worker models of Uber et al, but that's an orthogonal point to the general formation of startups.

[kevinventullo]

For ultra successful startups, sure everyone gets rich.

I think the issue is with the 95% of startups that have no or moderate success who convince employees that lotto ticket equity and beanbag chairs are worth more than work-life balance, healthcare, and cold hard cash.

[rjtavares]

> Are you implying that startup success in America requires exploitation of workers? I don't think most people would consider the management of early employees at successful startups to be "exploitative". Most of them are heavily incentivized.

This statement perfectly encapsulates the difference in work culture from the US and Europe. Exploitation doesn't happen because successes exist. You can get rich, so everything is allowed.

Having less social nets and having more startups aren't independent: they both result from an inherently risk taker culture.

(of course, all generalizations are limited and may not apply to all cases)

[throaway1990]

He's implying that workers should work hard and give all the earnings and IP to the govt so they can "redistribute" and "rehire" for communal good.