[toomuchtodo]

Paypal is not some monument of success (how much did Adam Neumann make from WeWork?), nor is X, he just bought Twitter by borrowing against his Tesla shares at an inflated valuation (inflated by sentiment and hype). Is he good at slave driving people who mostly care about mission? Yes. Does that mean it is what we want to optimize for at scale? I argue no. Important to be mindful what we are and what is worth optimizing for collectively and how that changes over time.

If I drive my workers to various flavors (emotional, physical, etc) of failure to succeed economically, are you going to look up to me? If so, you've failed the litmus test. Progress is nice, but so is a reasonable balance for our short existence on this rock. Be Woz, not Jobs or Musk.

(high empathy human, early TSLA investor, own Teslas, know people at SpaceX, etc)

[damnitbuilds]

You did not answer my question.

If Europe wants to be "more internal[ly] stable and international[ly] competitive", then its 40-hour-per-week, 5-weeks-holiday-per-year companies have to compete with Tesla, Spacex, Paypal, X etc.

And they are clearly failing to do so.

[toomuchtodo]

Europe has SEPA for instant value transfer, they do not need paypal. AT Protocol can replace X, no need for Europe to have their own X ("protocols, not platforms"). Europe can eventually build EVs faster and/or better (~20 moving parts in a drivetrain) and improved space vehicles when they're ready, they're not trying to live on Mars.

What has US tech built that Europe needs? Europe has services and great quality of life, the US has performance art capitalism paperclip maximizing for shareholder returns and is a third world country [1] [2] [3], broadly speaking. The race is not what you think it is. What are you building for? To just keep grinding or building? Or for people to live happy, healthy lives at scale? Engineering is fun, and leads to progress, but it is a means to an end, not the point of life.

[1] https://worldhappiness.report/

[2] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings

[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-visual-breakdown-of-who-o...

[Aeolun]

> Europe can eventually build EVs

Bosch has been building EV’s for literal years. Just because they’re selling them as parts doesn’t mean they’re incapable.

[toomuchtodo]

I don't disagree with this (love Bosch except my dishwasher IoT annoyances), but OP believes you need to be Tesla or BYD to be "successful." You can always succeed if you get to define success. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and life is meant to be lived, not brutish and short grinding for silly KPIs.

[WorldPeas]

good luck getting Linus Torvalds back from us! Jokes aside, i think the EU needs to reach consensus on a new operating system if you want digital sovereignty. So far I know of a few nations doing so for law enforcement/military, and I know of Jolla or webos, but I am unaware of any efforts like Huawei and harmonyOS to create a sovereign unified ecosystem.

[damnitbuilds]

"What has US tech built that Europe needs?"

Oh, come on.

And you are confusing personal happiness with company success. Europe prioritises the former, at the expense of the latter.

[toomuchtodo]

If you believe in optimizing for company success at a macro level from a mental model perspective, why are we talking? Go grind and be prepared to make peace how you wasted your life on your deathbed. I have attempted to show you a different perspective, whether you internalize it is up to you. I've been down that road, and caught myself in time with some life left to be lived. Never stop asking "why?" OODA loop style.

> Oh, come on.

I stand by my assertion.

[damnitbuilds]

You are confusing personal happiness with company success.

[toomuchtodo]

You seem to get it [1], so I'm not sure why we're arguing? I wish you the very best. Stay curious and openminded. Don't work too hard, we're all dead eventually, enjoy the ride.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43471675 ("Even if I was programming Starship's flight computers, I would miss my family too much to work more than 40 hours per week. Regardless of really believing in their work, people want to have time with their loved ones.")

[Aeolun]

I’m fairly certain this is because nobody feels the need to, combined with a dose of old money.

[ethbr1]

Old money is a toxic accretion of capital: because it optimizes for "not losing" as opposed to "maximally investing"

There's a reason the British industrial revolution was funded by new, sugar/slave-trade money -- because it went to people open to investing in this new, weird steam power thing.

[dathinab]

this is a pointless argument as close to all US mega cops have been quasi subventioned until they became monopolies, not sure how you expect a proper competition there (specifically subventioned by a few very wealthy entities, not the state).

in addition many of them did end up where they are by taking advantage of a major technological change, while being quasi subventioned, while being in a huge country which has until recently exported it's culture and tech, while systematically breaking all kinds of (non employee protection related) laws and regulations (including US laws/regulations, through seldomly with consequences in the US)

there is little which indicates that mistreating your employees was overly relevant for them to get where they are in most cases

actually it's even the opposite to some degree, multiple of the US mega corps have been known to be quite good employers (e.g. MS, Google). Microsoft was also one of the first huge companies which tried out a 32h week in some of their offices (and the results of that study indicated that it was leading to improvements).

and in general I think most people have no issues with highly payed highly skilled people "working hard like crazy" if

- it's well payed (i.e. you work "crazily hard" a few years and then can lay back for years after

- it's fully free of your choice to end up there

- you are also fully free to leave if you realize it's hitting your health to hard

Like company founders working "crazily hard" at the start of their journey is as normal in the EU as it's in the US. And paying people which work "crazily hard" extra, often in form of annual Bonus payments, is also in some markets not that uncommon in the EU. Also jobs which people very often don't do for more then a few years, because it's just not healthy.

But what Musk is pursing is so far beyond that on the unhealthy spectrum.

And a more normal employees has to be able to work their job without larger gap for like what 50 years at least. That just isn't compatible with "working crazily hard".

But Musk is just an extreme example of what you see in in general more in the US:

Indirectly force people to work harder then long term substainable and when it start causing chronic issues take "medicine" to fix it.

And then be surprised if your country has pain killer/drug addiction epidemic which doesn't just affect the people which did fall through society but like all levels of society.

And wrt. internal stability, have you looked at the US recently!? It's more unstable then it ever has been since the civil war.