All these takes on European workers being too shielded are nonsense.
First of all, they're greatly exaggerated. The specific case of a large German company that is union connected doing layoffs is cherry picked. It's basically the most shielded situation possible but far from the norm in Europe as a whole.
I'm from the Netherlands myself. Up until COVID we were on a path where employers were pushing everybody into flex contracts. It's a fixed length contract (1 year with a 3 month trial period) that may or may not be extended.
Maximum flexibility for employers, minimum job security for employees.
Did this lead to some spur in growth or innovation? No.
Europe's problem isn't related to worker conditions. It's a silly thing to say considering ludicrous US tech salaries.
Silicon Valley is the result of gigantic amounts of excess (Wall street?) capital creating a tech Valhalla. A black hole ecosystem swallowing money and talent domestic and abroad. Europe doesn't have this capital and the capital we do have we probably put in US tech stocks.
It's a similar problem to US manufacturing vs Shenzen manufacturing. The Chinese government as well as many Western companies invested decades and hundreds of billions into making it the state-of-the-art factory of the world.
I get what you're saying but by current EU privacy law interpretation this approach is not allowed.
You can of course charge for services but you cannot charge people just to get rid of tracking. This is not to be confused with ads. You can run ads and offer a paid version without ads. It's about the tracking.
You're just retrofitting reasons to justify the behavior I describe.
Forget about those reasons. They don't matter. They can have merit or not, it's irrelevant. Because the behavior takes place regardless. When people can legally avoid paying for something whilst still consuming it, they'll do that.
The idea that if only ads were more privacy-friendly people would not block them or start paying for content at any scale is laughable. They won't. When there's a free path, people take that path.
In a situation of supply scarcity all the market needs to do to function is to sell this limited supply. And this does not require the median citizen to be able to afford this supply. Thus the market isn't even irrational.
People block ads and/or not pay for content because they can. Simply because it's possible. People have been conditioned to consider any and all digital content to be worth zero. Yet continue to consume it for hours on end every day.
When not paying at all is an option people will reliably pick that option. They'll even go into extremes to avoid paying. I know somebody that plays a particular mobile game about an hour each day. Every round (taking 90s or so) it's interrupted by 1-3 mins of ads. It's maddening. She suffers through this instead of paying a one-time $4.99. We're talking about somebody firmly upper middle class.
This suggests an optimum of 2 full-time working adults where after a long day at work they perfectly share the workload of chores.
This is morally fine and correct from a fairness principle but it misses the point entirely. Dual income workism is the least likely to produce family sizes large enough to not go extinct. The model may be fair but at the same time its suicidal.
Similarly, seeing a work break to take care of children as an "opportunity cost" suggest that the optimum life path is a 4-5 decades long maximalist devotion to some corporate.
Obviously, each individual and couple is free to pursuit whatever they want, but collectively these models and norms will end us.
The problem is that the time benefits of automation are never returned to the people. We'll just invent new bullshit jobs.
(paid) hours worked per family are massively up over time despite exponential progress. We have stuff but no time nor security.
The countries with the most dire birth rates are the ones with a workaholic culture.
The depressing reality is rather than giving people back their time, even more of it will be pushed for in the future, to sustain the ageing population.
My utopian vision is that people should largely be freed from work. The new job is to create families, raise them, and enjoy them. No coercion is needed for these families to be created, we'll produce them out of boredom. Similar to when there's a sustained power outage.
This won't happen though. Instead we'll combine neural-link and AI and will effectively become bionic beings. You'll be forced to join as to not become an obsolete sub-creature.
On a similar note, humans cannot colonize the galaxy. Sending a single message across would take thousands of years. Instead a human ancestor would split into various individual species.
When you think of it, light speed is really slow. Even on Earth we are capped by it.
First of all, they're greatly exaggerated. The specific case of a large German company that is union connected doing layoffs is cherry picked. It's basically the most shielded situation possible but far from the norm in Europe as a whole.
I'm from the Netherlands myself. Up until COVID we were on a path where employers were pushing everybody into flex contracts. It's a fixed length contract (1 year with a 3 month trial period) that may or may not be extended.
Maximum flexibility for employers, minimum job security for employees.
Did this lead to some spur in growth or innovation? No.
Europe's problem isn't related to worker conditions. It's a silly thing to say considering ludicrous US tech salaries.
Silicon Valley is the result of gigantic amounts of excess (Wall street?) capital creating a tech Valhalla. A black hole ecosystem swallowing money and talent domestic and abroad. Europe doesn't have this capital and the capital we do have we probably put in US tech stocks.
It's a similar problem to US manufacturing vs Shenzen manufacturing. The Chinese government as well as many Western companies invested decades and hundreds of billions into making it the state-of-the-art factory of the world.
Once it's in place you can't replicate it.