Joie De Vivre: The Europeans Are Out To Lunch

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/13/joie-de-vivre-the-europeans-are-out-to-lunch/

by davidw • 18 years ago

27 68 18 years ago

timr5• 18 years ago

The Europeans may be out to lunch, but at least they're living a decent life while they're eating.

It takes huge balls to look at the US right now -- banks in collapse, citizens teetering on the edge of bankruptcy -- and claim that we're a model for the right way of doing things. The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet. What do most Americans live for? Buying cheap crap at WalMart? Buying better crap than the guy next door?

I could care less that the "best" web2.0 companies are based in the US, when those companies are laying people off right now. Their former employees will have to enter the worst job market in nearly 30 years, without health care to protect them if they get sick, or basic social programs to keep their children from going hungry. I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.

davidw8• 18 years ago

As an American living in Europe, I think there are things to be learned on both sides. I completely agree with things like health care, or things to protect people to some degree if they lose their jobs. What doesn't work in "Europe" (please not, however, that there are different systems within Europe) are some of the rigid labor laws, and the high barrier to entry for people wishing to create new companies.

... a little bit later ...

I wrote something about it myself, as it's a topic that's quite important to me:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/12/13/startups-and-work-euro...

doodyhead• 18 years ago

To address entrepreneurship in Europe misses the point. What Mike Arrington fails to realize is he's only talking about France. When it comes to work ethic, different European countries are world's apart. You can't take countries like France, Germany, the UK and Ireland and blithely treat them as one entity. Behaviors and attitudes to work and to start-ups differ vastly from one country to another.

taylan2• 18 years ago

As a US-educated entrepreneur based in Europe, I disagree. Their entrepreneurial culture is what's going to save the Americans, since they have the means to innovate their way out of this meltdown; be it through web 2.0 or greentech. Generous welfare state that we have in Europe presumes presence of a stable economy generating enough surplus wealth to sustain it. If we get outcompeted, it'll be the first thing to go unfortunately. We need to figure out a way to combine best of both worlds.

axod3• 18 years ago

The next big bubble = greentech.

donw2• 18 years ago

I'm probably horribly naïve, and quite possibly stupid, but I think the solution is actually pretty simple. Welfare, and all other aid programs, should be available to absolutely anyone, regardless of income. But none of these aid programs should result in the aid-ee receiving any form of currency.

For example, welfare should provide spartan clothing, housing, nutritious food, and that's it. No food stamps, no cash disbursal, but a safe and humane environment that can help people to get back on their feet. For those who don't want to get up and work, that's fine too, but comforts like being able to get coffee at Starbucks, or a big-screen TV, or a nice bottle of wine, aren't going to be provided by the government. If you want luxury, work for it.

corentin2• 18 years ago

> The French may not work 60-hour weeks, but at least they have the good sense to make the most of the time they've been granted on the planet.

France is the number one country in the world for antidepressant drugs consumption...

davidw8• 18 years ago

Is that because people are actually depressed, or because it's easy and cheap to get the pills?

Interestingly (well, in a grim sort of way), according to this, the suicide rate is pretty high in France, one of the highest in western Europe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

That's surprising to me, I would have thought France would show up somewhere between places like Italy and Spain (which have low rates despite being relatively a bit poorer), and more northerly, gray places like Germany. Belgium is quite high up there too.

johnyzee2• 18 years ago

The French are famous for extensive consumption of medicine in general.

corentin2• 18 years ago

> I think that's an awful, brutal, unfair system, and I'd gladly trade a little bit of "competitiveness" for a bit more compassion.

As I see in your profile that one of your goal is to live outside the US, let me tell you that I'll gladly trade my French passport for your US passport. In France, you'll have as much compassion, fairness, equality and socialism as you want (and probably even more!)

edit: to be honest, you are on the right track to experience this brilliant social system in the US...

davidw8• 18 years ago

Living abroad is a great eye opener: you see the good and bad in another system and way of doing things, and you get some perspective on your own country, too.

pg2• 18 years ago

Your argument is indistinguishable from the arguments people used to make in the 1970s about how life was better in the Soviet Union than the US. Sure, their GNP per capita was lower, but they had more leisure time; their lives were not merely devoted to piling up possessions; society had more compassion.

The actual fact, in hindsight, is that life in the Soviet Union was pretty grim for the average person. It was only good for the guys who ran everything. And that is pretty much the case in France, though on a smaller scale.

Once you leave the big tourist areas, France is pretty grubby. The median French citizen does not live some kind of charmed, stylish life in his ample free time. Nor is he so high-minded that he is above buying cheap crap. Everyday life in France for the average person is much like it is for the average person in the US, just a little poorer.

timr5• 18 years ago

I'm not only talking about France -- that was just the immediate target, as the country that Arrington visited.

Even in Germany they have very different attitudes toward work and social services than we do, yet still support an industrial and entrepreneurial culture (and still make fun of the French for being lazy). Framing this as a choice between US capitalism and French socialism (or Soviet communism) is a false dichotomy.

davidw8• 18 years ago

> Everyday life in France for the average person is much like it is for the average person in the US, just a little poorer.

That is not my experience in Italy. To take an example near and dear to that country, the average Italian eats much better than the average American. Indeed, the basic, raw ingredients you find in supermarkets are far better than what you get in the US.

But it's not just that... I find that the relationships between people are genuinely a bit better in Italy than in the US. Perhaps one of the effects of all that "stasis" (jobs for life, people less willing to move around for jobs) is that people really get to know one another. I have several friends in Italy I've known for 13 years, but barely anyone in the US I've known for that long. I've heard some people say this is also true of small towns in the US, but I've never lived in one so I don't know how to compare it to Italy.

In short, in economic terms, you're correct, but the broader picture is more complex, and doesn't favor the US 100%. That's not to say that one is necessarily better... after many years of both, I guess I have a more nuanced view. I wouldn't hesitate to say the US is better for founding startups, but if you're just Joe Schmoe, life can be nice in Europe, too, even if you don't have an SUV and a fancy television set like your American equivalent.

Tichy• 18 years ago

How did you get the "just a little poorer" part? Of course the US is the richest country at the moment, but I wonder if that also goes for the average American?

Also maybe in terms of owning things for example maybe it is easier to own a house with garden in the US, making people rich in terms of owning a house and garden. But french people living in an interesting cultural environment in a small flat might feel richer than somebody living in their own house at some crossroad in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I guess the average french factory worker doesn't really take 4 hour lunch breaks all the time, either...

michaelneale• 18 years ago

I have had holidays in various parts of France, and what I have seen wouldn't back that up at all. The only "poor" seemed to be in the outer paris suburbs (notable for violence in recent times) - and perhaps Calais, which was a bit of a toilet.

So I don't think its all like the Soviet comparison - in the soviet case it was deliberate mis-information to try and destabilise the west, controlled deliberately by soviet organisations.

time_management2• 18 years ago

Honestly, I think that it'd be a lot better for American entrepreneurs for the US to learn from the European model. Small businesses will benefit enormously from universal healthcare, for example. More vacation wouldn't hurt either. I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that productivity is probably maximized, per hour, at 9-10 weeks' vacation, and in gross, at 4-5. It makes sense for the most ambitious 1% to work 50+ hour weeks, during the highest-energy decade of their life... but it doesn't make sense for everyone to be working that much.

etal2• 18 years ago

Lately it's been bothering me more that we're expected to get our health care plans through our employers. The proportion of Americans who hold traditional full-time, salaried positions at medium-to-large companies is far from 100%. A health care plan is something everyone needs; a job is something much more flexible that we do to earn (notably inconsistent amounts of) money. Moving toward either socialized medicine or the libertarian/free-market model would be better for entrepreneurship -- relying on a paternalistic employer for access to essential services isn't even a local optimum.

jbjohns2• 18 years ago

Universal health care I'm not so sold on, but the possible options aren't just (1) universal health care and (2) the incredibly awful system the U.S. has.

I'm an American living in Switzerland, for example, and here it is simply the law that you must have insurance. And since the government is guaranteeing income for insurance companies there are controls on how much money the insurance companies are allowed to make (from time to time they even have to send checks to their customers because they made to much money!). Since their profits are capped there is no incentive for shady practices like telling every person who claims "no" knowing full well that around 50% wont know enough to push it further as you see done in the US, South Africa, etc.

jerf• 18 years ago

"banks in collapse, citizens teetering on the edge of bankruptcy" - have you not been reading the news from Europe? Have you not noticed the way the word "global" is prepended to the word "recession"?

Europeans had about four days of gloating while we stumbled. Then the gloating stopped because it turned out that many of their banks were even more leveraged than ours, despite their supposedly-superior regulation regime, and their bill came due too. For all that you hear people bitching about the US, in relative terms it's actually not doing so bad. (I'd prefer that we'd all be growing in absolute terms, but the whole "Europe is better than the US argument" is intrinsically relative, so I'm just agreeing to your terms and following through.)

You want to talk about how much better the European system is, then explain why this is happening there and not here: http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stor... And notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris. Nor is this the first time.

The European-style social system is unsustainable, and to their credit they are beginning to recognize this and beginning the hard task of scaling back their promises, but they face challenges from all those who were promised and do not want to give it up. I have found it highly ironic (and very sad) that as Europe wakes up to the failures of, for instance, socialized healthcare, the US seems primed to go charging into that pit of despair more than ever.

timr5• 18 years ago

"You want to talk about how much better the European system is, then explain why [the French immigrant riots are] happening there and not here....and notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris. Nor is this the first time."

1) It's early. If we keep up with the immigrant-baiting in this country, we'll get there. Just last year, we had huge protests in the major cities because of the way that we treat immigrants. Did you not notice?

2) We've been doing the violent social protest thing for quite a while: the Watts riots in 65, the LA riots in 1992, looting after Hurricane Katrina, the Benton Harbor riots in 2003...and many, many others. Here's a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots#1990s_-_2000 (for fun, count how many times France appears in the list, relative to the US!) We have a long, illustrious history of making minority groups so angry that they erupt into violence, so if anything, France is late to the party.

3) For the most part, the European banks were not more leveraged than US banks, with certain critical exceptions. That said, most of the world's banks make significant investments in US debt-backed assets, so it's pretty hard for an economic downturn in this country to avoid affecting other industrialized nations. The bank argument is a straw man.

johnyzee2• 18 years ago

> why this is happening there and not here: http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stor.... And notice the scale! This is not an isolated riot in one block of Paris.

These are discontended immigrant groups. The riots in L.A. in '92 were regular American citizens. The Parisian suburbs have got nothing on the ghettos of L.A., New York, and Washington. Murders are actually rare in European cities.

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

"What do most Americans live for? Buying cheap crap at WalMart? Buying better crap than the guy next door?"

That doesn't describe any Americans I know. On what do you base this claim? How do you know what most Americans live for?

guruz2• 18 years ago

it describes the european cliche of the US. That is all what counts in internet discussions ;)

fauigerzigerk• 18 years ago

Don't watch the vid. It's a bunch of boring people exchanging well rehearsed arguments about nothing more than cliches.

davidw8• 18 years ago

Oops, I didn't even notice there was a video. I pretty much completely ignore videos online unless I'm actively looking to watch something on youtube. I see 99% of them as a waste of my time.

kschrader• 18 years ago

You are clearly not part of the target market for Seesmic. Although I'm not sure who is, to tell you the truth.

rapind• 18 years ago

Plus you'd need to enable about 20 or so script domains to even load techcrunch videos... seriously, why so many scripts? xss to boot.

ojbyrne2• 18 years ago

Using eBay buying Skype and Sun buying MySql as proof of the superiority of the US system seems a little tenuous, since both those American companies seem to be headed down fast (while the European ones produce actual quality products), and the ease of buying out foreign competitors was largely due to the availability of easy money that's at the heart of the current credit crisis. Meanwhile the larger trend, due to the US's status as the world's largest debtor, has been the other way - foreigners buying up US companies, despite significant regulatory barriers that the US government has put up.

nwnissen• 18 years ago

Both Skype and MySQL originated from Scandinavia which is completely different from southern Europe.

Can someone please define the common European properties that form the basis of this discussion?

ojbyrne2• 18 years ago

Mike Arrington painting all of Europe with the same brush.

axod3• 18 years ago

Maybe Europeans are out to lunch, but Britains are not. It's a completely different culture.

puzzle-out• 18 years ago

The Brits skip the lunch, gets in the way of drinking.

jorgeortiz85• 18 years ago

Can you blame them? I wouldn't want to eat British food either.

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

I was talking to skmurphy this week at the Hackers and Founders meetup this week. He said that his business is booming (consulting for early stage entrepreneurs). His quote, "We're working with a lot of guys who had no idea they were becoming consultants."

There's also going to be a lot of pain and suffering, but there's also a lot of people who start businesses from the ashes of their lost jobs.

joubert• 18 years ago

I find it insightful that just two lines down from this post (currently) on the front page of HN is a post "I don't want to work very hard" and it has a score of 188. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=394609

jbjohns2• 18 years ago

It was made by an American, so what is the insight it gave you? That maybe America doesn't have a good work/life balance and it's starting to bubble up?

danw• 18 years ago

From the comments:

"Bundling all europeans into one category has never been a sign of smart to me. "

fbailey• 18 years ago

Most interesting thing is probably the quality of the discussion on HN compared to TC ...

There are some very big differences between europe and the US:

1) Funding - it's trivial to get funding in the valley compared to europe, more former founders, more vc

2) Market Size - the US market is just bigger, of course the combined EU market is even bigger but you need 20 marketing teams to try to work with it

3) Culture - Yes there is no start up culture comparable to the US, but that's not that bad. The work/life balance thing is true in general, but i've never met a european startup founder who doesn't work the weekends.

4) Failing - Failing is not that acceptable, and that's a big obstacle, especially since you have to get more parts of your funding from banks.

5) Cluster There are only very few technology clusters and none comparable to the valley

6) ...

symptic• 18 years ago

This post and the video sickened me. I think everyone had good points, but the panel (people we're supposed to respect?) would yell and change topics when someone made an actual valid point.

The one comment about 'Americans need to appreciate life and Europeans need to work better' is the best argument in the entire video and it was looked over. Arrington is blind to say the Americans had the best stage presence. Le Meur was the most reasonable I think through the whole thing and he was cast aside. Why? Because he's french.

Seems to me the American panelists (Feldman aside) only see the world how they want to. There are great people everywhere, and the mentality they exhibited-focusing purely on winning and being efficient-shows their lack of comprehension into what matters most, both in life and business.

No matter how efficient you are or how much you want to win, it's important to have a level head to be able to step back and appreciate the things around you. Shoving your face in your work 12+ hours a day will make you miss half your life. I don't know about most of you guys, but I learn the most living life as compared to reading blogs and business articles.

time_management2• 18 years ago

There's an important distinction. The US is racially much more heterogenous than "Europe", but culturally fairly homogenous, because the vast majority of immigrants want to be Americans.

To have a Silicon Valley, you've got to attract a disproportionate share of talented and ambitious people. You need a critical mass. That's much easier to attain in a culturally semi-homogenous country full of nomads than in the EU, which has its people segregated into over 20 different nations. This is also why the US has better universities. If the same linguistic and cultural barriers existed between Montana and Massachusetts (which are culturally very similar places, on the European scale) as do between Russia and Great Britain, we probably wouldn't have a Silicon Valley.

By the way, European investment bankers work the same egregiously long hours as American bankers do, and middle-of-the-road Americans would gladly take the lives of average Europeans. There isn't a huge difference in the distributions of drive; what differs is the level of effort expected from the rank-and-file. Arguably, however, Americans get less from them, and the rank-and-file are so unproductive (compared to startup founders) that this difference is inconsequential at the big-picture level.

petercooper• 18 years ago

Forget the entrepreneurial culture. It's there in Europe. The problem when it comes to the Web is the culture of the consumers. Europeans are generally, in relation to their American counterparts, technophobic and less experimental with new technologies.

Broadband wasn't even popular in the UK until 2002-2003, after a whole growth and boom cycle had gone round in the US. Internet usage in France was incredibly low until a couple of years ago, and progressive tech-friendly countries like Denmark, Finland and Estonia had too small populations to have a significant effect.

gaius2• 18 years ago

Internet usage in France was incredibly low until a couple of years ago

To be fair, the French were doing with Minitel what most people use the Internet for decades earlier.

etal2• 18 years ago

Quibble: Those 2-hour lunches with a beer or a half-bottle of wine aren't a bad thing.

On the occasions when I've been in Europe for business, a relaxing lunch and dinner were what made me perfectly willing to work 10-12-hour days six days a week. In the states, with just a quick sandwich or a burrito for lunch, I'm itching to go home by 5 p.m. to clear my head and get a decent meal. And now that I'm back in school, I find a leisurely break in the middle of the day puts a few more productive hours in me when I get back to the lab.

davidw8• 18 years ago

If I may write a completely frivolous comment, I would go on the record as saying that I would just about kill for a decent burrito, something which is pretty much impossible to find in Europe.

Joie De Vivre: The Europeans Are Out To Lunch

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