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by PurpleRamen 972 days ago
> I keep maintaining that Germany is much much better country overall simply because it's not centralised as UK is centralised in London.

That's interesting. In Germany the decentralization is considered a main reason for the many problems on modernization in bureaucracy and other public areas.

> Those are so so misleading into making people believe that Germany or mainland Europe is a wasteland that missed out on technology.

I think the reason is more that Germany was an early adopter of many technologies, but was then trapped on old infrastructure and workflows, while some others simply failed for various reasons. So it's more an upgrade-problem, then "installation"-problem.

> Europe's core problems all come down to cheap energy availability and that's solvable. It's much easier to solve than stuff like widespread social problems like decline due to drug use or political instability.

In theory yes, in reality it goes hand in hand. Germany for example is cursed by people who poison the progress since a long time. And the harm is showing since a while now. Ironically, it usually only gets better when something catastrophically happened, like Fukushima, or the War with Russia.

1 comments

>In Germany the decentralization is considered a main reason for the many problems on modernization in bureaucracy and other public areas.

They probably have a point. Both structures have pros and cons, I believe.

That's for sure. But Germany at the moment is in a phase where the decentralization is biting it. While UK seems to succeed in some areas where Germany fails at the moment. So it's fascinating to see such a comment.
There are lots of tradeoffs with the current decentral/federated system for sure. But one key point is that it’s incredibly hard for an extremist or fascist party to take over the whole country and run it into the ground quickly(again!). And with the growing rightwing populism over here it’s a good thing to prevent the worst.

Of course the setup also slows down progressive policies or any changes in general due to conservatives/rightwingers blocking things, but that’s the price of it.