Date: 22 Dec 1998 11:14:06 +0100 From: Benedikt Stockebrand <bs_13951_20574@adimus.de> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool, A White Snowy Christmas in Sunnyvale, California 8) Message-ID: <sa7hfuoh4b4.fsf@adimus.de> In-Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard"'s message of "Mon, 21 Dec 1998 08:03:36 -0800" References: <83356.914256216@zippy.cdrom.com>
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"Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> writes:
> Speaking as a former occupant of Europe, I can only agree. :)
\begin{aol}
Speaking as a life-time captive of Europe, I can only agree, too :(
\end{aol}
> Let's not even get into the differences in tax rates... Sometimes I'm
> amazed that there are _any_ rich people in Europe, or if not amazed
> then certainly understanding why there's so much money in Switzerland.
> With taxes as high as 75% in some of the Nordic countries, I'd
> hide my money too! :)
Well, while I've never made it further north than Denmark, the system
in scandinavian countries is basically that lots of things are
government-funded. I was told that in Sweden you get a leased line
(IIRC 2Mbit) virtually for free all throughout the country even though
the population density in most places is somewhat scarce even compared
to US standards.
Comparing the percentage of analphabets in the US and most european
countries, a government-paid school and college/university system the
higher taxes may be well spent in many cases.
However, the government-sponsored leased lines in Sweden are basically
what starts the problems with telco monopolies: Since things are
sponsored they aren't usually done in a particularly economic way. So
while Sweden gets a head start with WAN technology and everything
based on it chances are that in a couple decades they'll pay dearly
for an inefficient government monopoly. This is exactly what happened
when telephony came up some decades ago. Unfortunately it took a
bl**dy long time for people to realize that a start-up government
sponsoring needs to be throttled as soon as the whole thing gets
enough momentum to be left to the economic mechanism.
> Seen just yesterday: Round-trip from San Francisco to London, $277 USD.
> Gack! At that price, it's almost worth going for just a couple of days.
Could you get me a round-trip Frankfurt-San Francisco-Frankfurt for
the same rate?-)
> That and a total lack of competition. With any market based economy,
> things are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them, there
> being no such thing as "intrinsic value" anymore, really. Therefore
> when there are two or more providers of a reasource, they play off one
> another and people's willingness to pay without negotiation first goes
> down, driving the prices down in turn. It's not like the businessmen
> in the U.S. are more altruistic or anything, there are simply a lot
> more of them competing for those scarce customer dollars! :)
OTOH, there are some projects that need (government) funding to get
started somehow. This may be a reduction of taxes paid by companies
embarking on such projects. I don't know what's done about this,
really. At least with your health insurance things get pretty
expensive once you start a company.
Another big problem is venture capital. Technically speaking it's not
unknown here in Germany, but I doubt that any bank would actually dare
to go for this. That's a fairly big problem (especially for yours
truly currently trying to start a company with some friends) even if
you're in the sysadmin outsourcing business where you don't need much
initial capital for equipment but enough money to get something to eat
for a couple months.
> What really burns me up is that Europe, with its far more advantageous
> population density, hasn't leveraged this advantage properly. When
> your entire country is the size of one small eastern U.S. state,
> you're able to do a lot of really nifty things that you just can't do
> when your population is over 250 million people.
Just for the records: About two or three years ago in another
newsgroup I've asked about the price for a T1 leased line of 10 miles
in the US.
The equivalent (S2M 2Mbit leased line) here in Germany was about 70
(seventy) times as expensive as in southern California. No typo.
> You can have smaller, more effective schools
I think we take good advantage of that. We've got three different
levels of high schools, for example.
> and closer ties with
> industry for training students in real-life situations (what the
> Germans call a student's "prakticum", I believe)
Even though I consider that a good idea this can bring some problems
with it, too. Sometimes industry is more interested in cheap labour
(especially fortran^Wcobol programmers) than actually training
people...
> What I do know is that many European countries have been famous for
> centuries for having some of the best educated populations and for
> fostering some of the greatest periods of intellectual advancement
> (like the Rennaisance) in human history. Now that we've reached the
> information age, it looks like just about everyone except for perhaps
> Finland has completely dropped the ball. What's going on over there,
> guys?
In a nutshell: Politicians trying to manage technological progress...
> You should have wireless, unmetered usage, IP networks covering
> every major city and federal programs where every able-bodied citizen
> over 10 years old gets a state sponsored laptop and a wireless modem.
> Villages of 40 people or more should qualify for free E1 service or
> even more if some percentage of the population is actively engaged in
> software development.
... and a stout oak tree for the politicians trying to tell people how
to do business.
So long,
Ben
--
Benedikt Stockebrand Adimus Beratungsgesellschaft für System-
System Administration & Design, und Netzwerkadministration mbH & Co KG
IT Security, Remote System Mgmt Universitätsstr. 142, 44799 Bochum
Opinions presented are my own. Tel. (02 34) 971 971 -2, Fax -9
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