Unionizing Tesla would almost certainly not "accelerate the advent of sustainable transport". More likely cause it to wither and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few as we saw with GM et al.
All German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. VW has one of the strongest unions in Germany and is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world.
That's fine for companies in industries that are reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you want to be.
German GDP per capita is about 45k, as compared to 65k per capita in the US. But that hides a lot. Germany's most productive city is Berlin. Berlin's GDP per capita is....45k. The US on the other hand has cities like San Francisco, with a GDP per capita of 98k, fully 2x that of Germany's best city.
That isn't an accident. Germany and most of Europe have no tech sector to speak of as a direct consequence of their labor and regulatory policies. The EU is a huge economic block, comparable in scale collectively to the US or China, and it has a highly educated population. And yet, it has near zero presence in the most important industry of the 21st century. That's a staggering indictment of their economic policy. 2nd and 3rd tier US cities have more tech than Europe does.
Tesla would never have gotten off the ground anywhere in the EU, and our climate change prospects would be a lot worse off for it. If we want to solve the major problems facing the world, it's going to require major innovation, and that isn't going to come from EU style market regulation.
Where did you get this from? Germany is actually the only country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000€, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000€, Hamburg 60,000€, Berlin 40,000€ [1].
Germany is highly federated, with large companies near or in small towns or cities that only exist because the company was founded there decades or centuries ago.
You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech company. They are making cars that happen to have some driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as much tech as WeWork was tech.
> Germany is actually the only country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000€, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000€, Hamburg 60,000€, Berlin 40,000€ [1].
I was using the city with the highest absolute GDP. That's a fair point that Munich has a higher GDP per capita.
> You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech company. They are making cars that happen to have some driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as much tech as WeWork was tech.
My point about tech isn't so much the nature of the business, as the presence of a well functioning startup scene. I think it would be very very difficult to start a new capital and labor intensive company like Tesla in Germany today, and the non-presence of tech is just symptomatic of the difficulty of starting new businesses.
Compare the largest companies by revenue in the US to Germany:
Most of the German ones were founded in the first half of the 20th century, if not earlier (you have to be a little careful reading the list, a few say they were founded recently, but they were really just the mergers of old companies - there are a couple legitimately new ones though). In the US, there are tons of companies founded in the last few decades on the list. My argument is that the German economy is mostly sustaining itself on the back of its economic achievements prior to the institution of its modern labor policies. Economic dynamism has been hamstrung.
You are very much ignoring a lot of historical developments that lead to the situation that Berlin is in. Berlin used to be an industrial powerhouse, many well-known companies were founded there - Siemens for example. Borsig, Varta, Osram, ... had large factories in the city. However, after WW2, Berlin was divided and the western part hard to reach, so most companies relocated, most industries disappeared. Siemens moved headquarters to Bavaria. Despite all the self-inflicted problems that slow economic growth, the expectation that Berlin could or should be on par with other capitals is problematic.
It’s notable, but the question of why that is so and whether that’s problematic is not as clear cut as it seems to be. For example, germany has a traditional industrial base that consists of mid-size, often family-owned businesses. We even have a word for it - Mittelstand. Quite some are world-leaders in their field. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is certainly open for debate, but it’s not as simple as “no unicorn startups in germany - fail.”
GDP is weird. For instance, private healthcare pushes GDP up, but I'm not sure Germans would like to have a higher GDP and pay a bunch more for healthcare in a market like situation.
More generally, if you look at Europe there are actually far more startups. They generally have much lower valuations though, because there isn't as much capital going into VC.
And probably you should look at Sweden as it does better than the US on a per capita basis in terms of startups.
Actually Germanys economy is very differently structured than the US. A significantly larger portion the GDP is coming from relatively small companies (called Mittelstand in German). Those companies also often invest very large percentages of their revenue into R&D (typically much more than the big cooperations). For example a significant portion of worldwide advanced manufacturing is powered by relatively small German companies that nobody ever heard about,
GDP per capita has very little to do with it.
The main differences between the US and Europe,when it comes to tech are these:
1) VC sector in Europe is where the US one was 20 years ago.
2) The US, even though it has states, it's still pretty much one market,while Europe,even when talking EU, is a collection of counties with very different cultures, languages,and attitudes towards innovation (e.g. Scandinavia is almost cashless society by now,while Germans are obsessed with cash).
In Germany, there are a lot of so called 'hidden champions' - companies that are small but focus on some higher end, niche products, e.g. oil filters,special purpose ball bearings,etc. The same is the case in many other European countries. This stay small approach is hard understand from the US,or Chinese perspective,where if you don't make $1B in revenue, nobody's going to put you on a map.
>In Germany, there are a lot of so called 'hidden champions' - companies that are small but focus on some higher end, niche products, e.g. oil filters,special purpose ball bearings,etc.
Which is great, but manufacturing those products doesn't generate the kind of cashflow or global influence that US tech companies generate.
Curious how many people here praising these hidden champions has worked for or wishes to work for one. I worked for a couple and it was eye-opening on never doing it again and avoiding them like the plague since they provide no high paying jobs and generate nearly no innovation as they simply survive on having cornered a niche market where neither US nor Chinese companies bother to compete because either the margins or volumes are too low and the decades-long relations with their customers are more valued in those businesses rather than cheaper price or better products.
Not everybody can rake in billions each year. It's perfectly fine for a company to make a few good quality wares that sell well in a niche. Somebody has to make air filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes, etc., you know?
By your logic everybody should just try to become a tech mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend or die.
>By your logic everybody should just try to become a tech mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend or die.
Except that's not what I said. I said, competing in a market making widgets is not as desirable for a modern country/economy/company/employee vs one that exports software and innovation, like the US, as manufacturing, more often than not turns into a race to the bottom of reducing costs and I don't want to work in such an industry anymore since I saw how the sausage is made and I have goals in life that are not compatible with working in manufacturing.
>There is a lot of arrogance here on HN.>Somebody has to make air filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes, etc., you know?
Would you like to be this 'somebody' working in a factory making oil-filters or would you rather be in a a high demand, high paying job?
This is what's funny to me about the HN crowd. Saying they won't take jobs in Embedded Software/Hardware or the Video-Games industry because WLB is poor and it "pays peanuts" but at the same time preaching that 'someone' should work making stuff in factories, where salaries and WLB is actually poor. Not them of course, but 'someone' should do it.
> This is what's funny to me about the HN crowd. Saying they won't take jobs in Embedded Software/Hardware or the Video-Games industry because WLB is poor and it "pays peanuts" but at the same time preaching that 'someone' should work making stuff in factories, where salaries and WLB is actually poor. Not them of course, but 'someone' should do it.
Nice straw man you set up there. A company can make these things by building machines to do it. Funny thing: European companies are really good at making machines to do such things.
>A company can make these things by building machines to do it. Funny thing: European companies are really good at making machines to do such things.
Did you have any experience in this sector or it just an amrchair argument from an ivory tower of an white collar worker? Because I have first hand experience and factories, even in Europe still need quiet a few personnel.
And not all industries are automated, just ask people working in the meat packing industry or in Amazon warehouses, how their jobs are. Yes, in Europe.
I'm curious which companies you talk about, because there are a lot of statistics that many of these companies have significant higher R&D spending than most big corporations (certainly more than many famous SV companies). I also know of two people who joined one of these companies one came from a research postdoc position and made it to head of R&D (like a vice president I guess) within 5 years, another came from a slightly higher level, but also quickly made it to a similar position.
>That's fine for companies in industries that are reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you want to be.
This reminds me about the time we wanted better safety gear to our milling machine and boss basically told us that if we focus on safety too much, we might aswell shut the shop down.
Sure, I work with the risk of injuring myself, so that you can make 10x my income.
An issue dear to my heart (lived in EU most of my life).
I think it's more complex than you state. The EU is indeed one economic block, but the tech industry is quite varied within that block. Amsterdam has a relatively small but growing tech scene and the Dutch gov has been entrepreneur friendly for as long as I've been here. I just saw in the news a couple of days ago:
"Dutch cleantech startup Sympower raises €5.2 million to boost the European energy transition".
Berlin has quite a lot of fintech startups. I know because I worked with one. Yes the red tape and German regs are a PITA and slow things down. But I don't think unions or regulations are the only reason we have less tech startups here. It's also a lack of drive and vision within the population, a cultural thing.
> That isn't an accident. Germany and most of Europe have no tech sector to speak of as a direct consequence of their labor and regulatory policies. The EU is a huge economic block, comparable in scale collectively to the US or China, and it has a highly educated population. And yet, it has near zero presence in the most important industry of the 21st century. That's a staggering indictment of their economic policy. 2nd and 3rd tier US cities have more tech than Europe does.
If I have to choose between having one of the two relevant industrial robot companies in the world (Kuka, the other would be Yaskawa, also not from the US or China), the market leader in automation systems, pneumatic systems, etc. (Festo) and "companies making money by systematic privacy violations" (Hello Facebook, Google et. al.) I know which I'd rather have. And which industry is more important.
I think the EU is doing just fine here. But thanks for the concern.
Unions in Germany are very different from unions in the U.S.
U.S. unions are much more adversarial, seeing themselves as the enemy of management. In fact it is illegal for a member of management to be in a union in the U.S.
In Germany, unions hold board seats and see themselves more as partners, invested in the overall success of the business. The principle of codetermination means that union members can be in management. In Germany, unions are much closer to trade organizations or professional organizations, rather than the worker-management divide in the U.S.
In terms of politics, it's hard to be cognitively captured by the whole "greedy corporations oppressing workers" meme when you are sitting on the board and realize that your livelihood depends on the business doing well.
Similarly, German CEOs do not have the astronomical executive pay that US CEOs have. They are much more down to earth.
Germany is a nation that has had social insurance since Bismarck, primarily to contain a vigorous and violent left wing movement during the Kulturkampf of the late 19th Century. German unions are often quite conservative with respect to the culture wars and are hostile to that movement, which has its base more in the universitites and eco-groups than in the heavily unionized shop floors and production lines.
Yet at the same time, Germany has had no minimum wage until 2015. The US had a minimum wage since 1938. This, too, is because historically German businesses adopted a much more cooperative relationship to workers.
So even though it's true that Germany has high rates of unionization and an innovative economy, that does not mean that unions in the US would lead to the same outcomes. German and US unions are different beasts.
> Unions in Germany are very different from unions in the U.S
Union shop or not, employers in the US are more adversarial, primarily serving the interests of shareholders and will usually not voluntarily give workers a seat at the table. Of course the American unions have to be different as the environment is less cooperative than Germany
European unions are completely different from US unions in how they act. UAW is the only car union in the US and recently had federal probes and they arrested like 15 people in the leadership (they were using union dues to buy ferraris, backyard pools, and other such things). They currently have a federal monitor making sure they reform.
UAW is the union trying to organize Tesla's plant.
I should also note that almost all Japanese auto companies in the US are non-union and it's been that way for many decades.
Another thing worth noting is that European nations have mostly nationalized labor laws. Worker’s rights which unions are bargaining for in the USA are national laws in countries like Germany and—to a much greater degree—Sweden. In Europe if you want more paternity leave, you don’t ask your union, you vote for a labor friendly party. Worth noting is that corruption also exists in unions in Europe. So corrupt union leaders is not enough on its own to spin a narrative where unions in America are uniquely bad.
If the narrative that unions hinder business growth was true, you have to provide with some mechanism for which that would be the case. An easy one is that businesses have to spend more per workers and hence cannot afford bigger investment. This sounds right, but it is anything but. If that were the case you wouldn’t see Volvo factories still operating in Sweden.
What is it precisely that unions in America are doing which is not a national law in Europe, and European unions aren’t doing which causes businesses “to wither and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few”?
Suggesting a union is bad because it'd be good "for the benefit of a privileged few" is a bit ironic when the company is mamaged by a man who is in the running for the title of Richest Man in the World.
He’s only the near-richest man in theory. If he tried to convert all of his company ownership into cash, the company value would crash so fast that he would probably be lucky to actually recover one fifth of his theoretical wealth.
That's a stupid argument, because none of the people on the richest people lists have any significant portion of wealth in liquid assets.
Wealth for good reason is not defined as amount of cash you own.
It’s not an argument, just an observation that you can’t eat Tesla shares.
You seem to be replying as though I’m saying he’s not wealthy? Obviously he’s extremely wealthy by any definition. But most ultra-wealthy people are a LOT more diversified in their portfolio than Musk is. Someone with a diverse portfolio stands more chance of being able to functionally realise their wealth—if, say, they wanted to donate a large chunk of it to some charitable cause.
An argument could be made that Buffet is far and away the richest person (in terms of realisable wealth) due to his highly diverse holdings.
Detroit did this to themselves. They failed to innovate and got beat by the Japanese on quality. That wasn’t the unions fault, but the union gets blamed.
The unions complaints were only that they were gonna get left holding the bag when things got bad while the c suite floated off with full pockets..and they were right.
I do admit we got some labor rights out of the union movement. But there has to be a balance between rights and duties. I am only talking about accountability. Also I work in R&D and hence my situation is a little different from manufacturing. Also FYI I do slave from 8am to 8pm on most of the days.
Are you suggesting that the labour movement is actually not the cause of (western-)Europe's significantly better labour/welfare laws than the US - which unsurprisingly happens to never had a European-style mass labour movement?
What makes you so sure about that? Do you have any examples of how unionized workers produce less sustainable business then non-unionized workers? I don’t think Detroit is a good example as auto-workers in Europe still produce plenty growth for their business, while mostly belonging to a union.
