[pcurve]

"if you've ever driven a German car, you'll realize that the car was built for engineers and not for end users "

cracks me up. I once leased a BMW for 3 years. By the time I returned the car, I still didn't what all the cryptic buttons for HVAC and other controls. They just refused to follow established automotive ergonomic conventions.

Anyway, my father used to do business with Germans for a long time. He had many interesting stories to share, but one that has always stayed with me is, his disdain for how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals. This was in the 90s, so definitely passed the West Germany glory days.

My take is, in the era of global competition, Germans didn't know how to strike the right balance and effective allocate resources. Where to compromise, and where not to. I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

[joe_mamba]

>how cheap / penny pinching his German companies and their employees were when doing deals

I think most people(Americans mostly) don't have the faintest idea how true that is right now. Here's a comment of mine from a few weeks ago giving such a present-day example that will blow your brains of how cheap german companies are. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018023

I feel like German companies know they lost the innovation race (I mean companies that aren't Zeiss), they lost the cheap manufacturing race "thanks" to Russian gas dependence and ideological denuclearisation before enough renewables were built, so all that's left for them now to stay afloat is reducing labor and operating costs by offshoring and pinching all the pennies they can find, but even that it not enough since from where I stand there's weekly corporate bankruptcies and layoffs and that's including the fact that the government has been speeding like crazy the last 3+ years to make sure the private sector industry doesn't completely collapse.

[RGamma]

~46M employed (of which ~16M part time, usually related to child or elder care), ~84M total population, ~22M pensioners, avg age ~47, lots of SMEs, little natural resources. It's part of necessary consolidation. Considering all that, we're doing quite well...

[twoodfin]

I’m told that Germans in general are “cheap” and that this is an expected consequence of their economic policies designed to reinforce their industrial base.

I wish I could find the reference I’m thinking of, but the idea was that Germans buying absurdly cheap wine and their constantly underfunded trains were part of a pattern of deliberate domestic under-investment to keep exports competitive.

Someone ITT surely knows more.

[logicchains]

Surely not as cheap as the Dutch, who'll apparently send you a bill for a couple dollars worth of snacks you ate at their house.

[joe_mamba]

Dutch may be cheap at hospitality but they're savvy at running business, while Germans are cheap at running business and the economy in general, hence why austerity is their favorite word in the vocabulary, they're penny wise and pound foolish.

And unfortunately the focus on austerity post-2008 spearheaded by Germany only held the EU economy back compared to the US.

[petre]

If they're planning to reduce labour with this BMW robot, I have interesting news for them: the Chinese showcased kung fu dancing robots that runs circles around their lame German humanoid robot who can't even pour a beer, let alone assemble cars.

[specialist]

> blow your brains of how cheap

Yes and: ossified, top-heavy, ever more bureaucratic, MBA/consultant brain rot.

From your linked comment:

> willing to bet my entire salary that the costs of all the new extra bureaucratic overhead

Yup.

[Gravityloss]

I have long experience of multiple German car brands. The interface spectrum goes like this: driving and seats etc are close to perfect for me. As long as it's about buttons, they are really good. But once it goes to screens, it starts getting worse. And then, with mobile app, it's basically barely functioning at all.

[neuralRiot]

I work on German cars on a daily basis, the “online diagnostic” of one of the top brands runs on a sort of remote desktop fashion complete with windows boot screen, I don’t need to tell you that speed is not one of its main features.

[petre]

I like how the VW controls are laid out on older models but not the seats. They're too hard and not confortable. Even my Suzuki has better, more confy seats. The seats in the A1 I had were a diaster, especially the back seats, totally useless unless you put 10 year old kids in them.The fronts seats were hard, your butt would hurt after 3 hours. The engine was rattling new and the car is a pita to repair, something broke all the time. But it stuck to the road and was so much fun to drive that I skidded in a roundabout and nearly hit the lane separator. A Civic is probably better in every regard though. Newer Audi diesel models automotive eat up oil, adblue. You basically need to fill up at least 3 or 4 fluids all of the time, including screenwash. Just another extra reason to avoid diesels.

[stephencanon]

Our (~2015) 3-series controls are just about perfect. Where they differ from Honda/Toyota's controls that I am also very familiar with, they're noticeably better now that I'm familiar with them. Everything is really well thought-out.

Of course, now they (and almost every other manufacturer) have followed Tesla off the cliff and made everything a screen, so the current generation cars have abysmal controls.

[0x000xca0xfe]

     I don't know if it's sheer stubbornness or they're just wired differently.

As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore. They just want to keep the system running until retirement.

There is no long-term strategic thinking anymore, only feel-good policies and short-term cash burning for their respective clientele.

As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

[collingreen]

> there is nothing we can do

The is always something you can do. Sometimes it's hard or uncomfortable but you can still have an impact on the things you care about if you're willing to do enough.

[cucumber3732842]

>As a German I believe it's more about demographics nowadays. The country and all large companies are run by older people who only saw rising prosperity their entire life. They all have settled in a comfortable place and do not seriously care about the future anymore

However bad Germany is in this regard, I suspect the US is far worse. There is no cohort in the US who remembers living in "East US" to temper the excesses of the people who've only known ease and comfort (though of course those people will tell you they worked hard to <insert career/prosperity path that no longer exists).

[dogemaster2025]

Certain liberal cities are the “East US.”

[realo]

Do you mean places like Kansas? Very clearly becoming "East US" : https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-...

[dogemaster2025]

Actually Kansas is doing the opposite of East Germany.

East Germany introduced the Transsexuellengesetz in 1980, which allowed people to change their first name or gender, as long as they provided, among other things, two psychiatric evaluations to ensure the condition was permanent, and not some decision driven by some temporary influence or fashion, but a full diagnosis of transsexualismus.

[Throaway1985123]

True, Minneapolis had the USA Stasi deployed there!

[collingreen]

Which certain ones and in which way are they like the east Germany mentioned?

Or is this just lazy bigotslop?

[dogemaster2025]

The socialist ones, which were like east Germany because they are socialist.

[wholinator2]

What do you mean?

[OKRainbowKid]

That's my impression as well. The future is being sold for the present.

[joe_mamba]

>The future is being sold for the present.

That's where the famous high European pensions come from. In France now the average pension is higher than the average salary.

[Bombthecat]

Yeah, I would call it: managing the crash.

They try to hold on to everything until retirement and don't care about anything else. In ten years Germany is like, what? 60 percent over 60?

Everyone knows it won't work, but try to hold on to it as long as possible.

[shafyy]

You are right about the issue, but wrong about the action. There are things you can do. Vote for candidates and parties that genuinely want a different future. Become politically active yourself. Run for office. Work with your local community. Every bit of action helps.

[ivan_gammel]

There is no party in German political landscape interested, capable of solving or even understanding the problems that needed to be solved. We have lost political center to groups of special interests and medieval guides. The state sponsored tool for informing about political programs (Wahl-O-Mat) is biased towards political issues of the mainstream. E.g. nobody is talking about the suffocating monopoly of notaries or increasing the property ownership by any significant margin. Running for office is an interesting idea, but in party-dominated politics to achieve anything is a decades-long adventure.

[kuerbel]

The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs. If one party decides to put something "about the suffocating monopoly of notaries" in it, it's not enough to be mentioned. There have to be some parties at least to make it comparable.

Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself. Most parties put out short versions.

You also don't need to run for office to have an effect on party lines. I'm a member of a party. There are congresses on a regional (Bundesland) and national level. In my party the process is voting for proposals before the national congress due to the huge amount of proposals, but usually every proposal on regional level is discussed and voted on. It does not take much time to prepare a proposal, but it shapes the discourse.

[ivan_gammel]

> The wahl-o-mat is not biased, it's based on the respective election programs.

That’s exactly my point. If a problem exists or a solution to a problem is possible about which no party is willing to talk about, it will not show it. The choice of topics is based on party opinions, not on voter surveys. This is called bias.

> Also feel free to peruse election programs yourself.

I read the full programs. This is the main reason why I think German political system is in the state of crisis.

> I'm a member of a party.

You surely know some examples when a party member shaped the discourse and set the course of institutional reforms. How long did it take for that person to achieve such results?

[Bewelge]

> That’s exactly my point. If a problem exists or a solution to a problem is possible about which no party is willing to talk about, it will not show it. The choice of topics is based on party opinions, not on voter surveys. This is called bias.

It's not a bias. I think you're misunderstanding the meaning of the word. We vote for parties and the wahl-o-mat compares the opinion of these parties. It would be biased if it would give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to one or some parties. The parties' opinions not being a good representation of the important challenges we face is not a bias of the wahl-o-mat. You can question its usefulness but calling it biased is calling it dishonest.

And honestly? That sucks. You can question its usefulness but please don't call an initiative that aims to give the populace a better political overview biased for no reason. You're not helping shape political discourse for the better here. I just checked: There weren't any no google results for "wahl-o-mat bias" yet. Now there are.

[shafyy]

For me personally, Die Linke is hitting many spots. Of course, nobody will ever be 100% aligned with a political party's program, but that's ok.

[markbravo0312]

It seems to even get the compass needle pointing in the right direction would require immense personal sacrifice. This brings to mind a line I heard recently: “I burn my life to make a sunrise I will never see.”

[throwway120385]

Or a lot of smaller sacrifices by a large group of people.

[joe_mamba]

>who only saw rising prosperity their entire life.

Their prosperity has been artificially inflated and not earned for the last years, as the government adjusted their pensions according to inflation, not according to actual economic growth/fall of the nation. It's a cheat code that shouldn't be used if you wish for economic reality but it's used to buy votes.

>They just want to keep the system running until retirement.

To be fair, this is a similar issue with Boomers versus Gen-X in the US and most of the west.

[petre]

> As a young person it infuriates me but there is nothing we can do.

Spend your money elsewhere, perhaps?

[expedition32]

There was always global competition but Mercedes and BMW had the brand power.

At least Volkswagen is still building relatively cheap and reliable cars for the masses- they can compete with Kia and Skoda.

[brummm]

Skoda is owned by VW

[Bombthecat]

For me, it feels like Skoda is the old VW...