Correct. The government has a spending target, let's say 56% of GDP (that is taxes, how much you can borrow from creditors, and how much money printing you can afford).
Then they divide that money in categories, and it turns out IT industrial policy got allocated that much money, which they divide into projects.
In this project, they build a comittee, which decides the best is to subsidise cool sounding initiatives by well connected, politically correct groups.
Top to bottom government spending that goes wasted in politically connected groups that give nothing back to society.
Why do governments feel compelled to constantly intervene in businesses?
What market failure (apparently unique to Germany) are they fixing?
Edit:
I have like 4 different responses. 1) Open source is a human right, 2) security is a mess, 3) China has proven an invasive industrial policy can be successful, and 4) Government intervention is important to prevent wealth imbalances
So my conclusion given the lack of consensus is that this fund is totally pointless.
The statement here is that some "basic digital infrastructure" like compilers or security protocols are fundamental to every individuals participation in the "digital revolution".
Therefore the government wants to fund some of this basic infrastructure in order to prevent it from going closed-source or proprietary.
The point is that open-source software is not and should not be regulated by the market, as it should not be profit driven.
What constitutes an "excellent open source history"? People that code often don't want to be bothered by organization and financial matters, and vice-versa, community work is still often disregarded as not truly open source work. Some people did sit down, did all the leg-work of getting funding for a study, did a study, published it (open source under CC-BY) - including a plan for the setup of the fund, cost analysis, how many people to employ and their pay (btw: roughly 10% of the budget, which seems reasonable at first glance), legal analysis of three funding models (1) and then someone with a random new internet account complains about their open source history (2) and their gender (3)
People with nice haircuts that produce nice looking documents and talk to the government for funding.
If the money funds technology that is still great!
But be very careful when a subculture becomes a platform for organizers who never did the actual work. Be it art or code or whatever.
The majority of people might have the best intentions.
The fear though is that we have here a nice breeding ground for sociopathic behavior in the open source space (for a narrow definition of sociopathic: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths).
The people behind this study are the open knowledge foundation germany - a foundation that exists since a decade, not just some random people that met and thought “oh cool, let’s rip off some government money.” The OKFN runs Jugend Hackt, the prototype fund and other projects. They’re doing actual work - the work that makes all the money come in that then gets distributed. The bookkeeping that’s required when you spend government money. You may not consider that “work”, but you’re wrong. I’d rather do five days of coding than one day of books.
> The bookkeeping that’s required when you spend government money.
Oh yeah. Acquiring government funding and the reporting for it is a big part of my day job. Coding still happens ... after midnight.
The funny thing is, I might even up as a beneficiary of this. And dump 50% of the money into technical work. The rest goes to the organizational overhead needed to get the funding in the first place. But the 50% technical work have to be the focus and acknowledged as the focus.
> The people behind this study are the open knowledge foundation germany - a foundation that exists since a decade, not just some random people that met and thought “oh cool, let’s rip off some government money.”
Looking at the teams-page of the OKF, that's a funny bunch. 90% did not work on open source prior to taking this gig (with just one or two shining counterexamples). And now they are doing it "for the love of it"?
It is okay to do open source as a normal dayjob. And teaching kids to code is important as well. I guess what pisses me off is the political class taking on roles of "thought leadership" in the "secret garden of the geeks" where entrance was once earned by hard, cold lines of code free of bugs.
> And dump 50% of the money into technical work. The rest goes to the organizational overhead needed to get the funding in the first place. But the 50% technical work have to be the focus and acknowledged as the focus.
You acknowledge that there's a lot of work involved in handling funding for an opens source project. And yet you seem to consider the that 50% of the work worthless, despite them enabling the 50% of the technical work. All my open source work is worthless in your eyes. I'll spend my christmas days fixing a mid five digit tax mistake that the technical people made on an open source project - because that work is boring and tech work is more important - and I get to ensure that the money doesn't go to the tax authorities. But my name doesn't appear in the commit log, so I'm not a contributor. I'm not even on the github org, nor visible in another place. In your eyes, that's worthless. In your eyes, I can't do it for the love of open source since I have no substantial code contributions in the past - and that's why no one takes those 50% off your hands, so you can focus 100% on the tech stuff.
Dude ... we basically have the same job.
I take the 50% off so other people do the technical work.
And without knowing specifics on what you do, if it is helping open source then I am grateful. In no way did I want to denigrate your work. And I understand where some frustration might come from if the effort is not properly acknowledged. Yet, there is nobility in knowing to have helped society in a quiet way.
Do you know the golden rule?
"The person with the gold makes the rules."
Things only become problematic when the organizational roles start to draw power from the golden rule and build a little political fiefdom to uphold their power according to their values and skills, say, lawyering. And given the different voices in this HN thread, I'm not the only one to have noticed such effects in some previously technical communities.
[sarcasm mode]
Let's see what happens once you become the person distributing the gold. Then it shouldn't be hard to extract some respect out of the grubby dirty hands of the code contributors.
Establishing a fund is not the same as regulating the beneficiary.
Compare for example with academia - universities in Europe are overwhelmingly government funded, yet they get a lot of freedom in what research they conduct.
The mess we're in, in terms of software security and reliability, when it comes to the infrastructure that runs our world is a textbook case-study on how a free market with profit incentives is neither an efficient nor effective driver of an economic system.
The drive for unsustainably externalised costs in both resource and labour exploitation, colloquially known as "pay peanuts, get monkeys", creates brittle systems with short term returns.
The whole idea of infinite returns in the limit due to steady return from a one time investment is just a different spin on a perpetuum mobile. Entropy incurs a regular cost, be it supply chains, tools, workers, or software.
Hey, came across a comment of yours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499058 in search engine results while researching the reasons to why learn Clojure as my next programming language.
I'm curious if you have change your mind about it or still prefer JS for new projects?
One thing that I find attractive about Clojure is Datomic (databases being a source of complexity in applications), its features like immutability(the db as a value, history), data structures as query language not strings, transactions and data model, OTOH, it's a scary niche black box. Also, the clojure REPL is a nice addition.
I'm no stranger to lisps, having played with scheme and racket, know macros, watched some Hickey videos and overall understand clojure's philosophy and concepts but haven't never use it for a real world business application. I'm sure nodejs/postgres could suit my needs perfectly but the ergonomics/defaults of clojure/datomic makes me think things would be less tedious to develop.
You can expect this to happen more and more as China demonstrated that innovation is indeed possible by government intervention.
Another thing that was demonstrated at exactly same time was that it is possible to have decade long stagnation in an open market. I'm talking about the state of the Web and mobile has come to in the hands of FB, Google and others in the free market with no government interventions.
The biggest sensation since many years is (China government supported) TikTok and the "free market" response to it was to try to ban it or force purchase it.
My hope is, that countries like USA and UK will re-think their understanding of fairness in a free market and once again we will have fair and innovative free business environment but at this time and stage there's evidence that governmental intervention can yield innovation in stagnated markets.
In this exact case, people at the German government are targeting a specific risk of foundational elements in tech being underfunded or overprotected.
Because it is one of the primary functions of the government to prevent excesses in the free market so that generated wealth is spread out over many people in society as opposed to a only a few. Because people consider that unfair it often leads to destabilizing society causing even more suffering.
Being generally conservative (and especially in business) would be the main reason. Cannot go wrong with the government after all, right?
Second reason may be strong lobbying from legacy IT concerns. They usually get government contracts and are usually viable for support from such funds.
If only the government had not intervened, via ARPA, to push packed switched networking and had allowed AT&T to keep doing what they did just imagine what the Internet would be today!
Military-industrial contracting in the United States seems to suck up a vast amount of developer talent, and that's all public spending. I'm not sure how you're distinguishing developers working in the fields of public health care, public education, public infrastructure etc. from those working under the secrecy umbrella of the military-industrial contracting system in this argument?
The amount spent does not say anything about efficiency if you don't consider what is provided with that money. Lack of free healthcare and education are some of the biggest complaints about the US after all.
Europe is also doing pretty well in several fields and you don't explain at all how tech in particular is affected by public spending.
Public spending is not the biggest issue. The problem is that having lots of government employees in cushy jobs starves the labor market of talent. Why take on a risky job at a flimsy startup when you can have a nearly guaranteed income till retirement in a 9-5 job?
I might take a risky job if the upside justifies the risk. But even in the US, the amount of stock options granted to employees (apart from the very earliest ones) will only result in a big pay-offs for the most successful of startups, and even then requires a lot of risk and/or sticking it out. EU startup culture appears less generous with equity and growth potential but doesn't make up for it with higher salaries.
We have those in the US too, it's called the "defense" industry. Our permanent wartime economy isn't for the good of most Americans or our talent pool—free education and healthcare (the largest discrepancy in public funding between the US and EU) would increase available talent but is considered authoritarian despotic socialism/communism within the American Overton Window.
Why take on a risky career path like being a doctor if best case you're half a million in debt and that's assuming you don't get weeded out at any point? It's no surprise we have shortages of engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, etc.
Even a bachelor's degree is on average 32k for in-state at public colleges assuming you graduate in 4 years. Contrast that with my German peers who didn't pay anything and yeah, maybe I wouldn't have been a software engineer if everything else wasn't so volatile. I certainly don't feel as essential as doctors or nurses, especially now.
Sure it's cheaper to start a LLC in the US and you can hire/fire on a whim practically, but 63% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $500 emergency. Doesn't exactly leave a lot of wiggle room unless your parents have a basement for your MVP and some seed money.
Well, you will pay these 20k only the 40-ish years you'll work, while you'll pay your US health care insurance until you die. The average American pays more for healthcare over their live than the average European, and the outcomes are objectively worse.
Also, EU governments provide retirement benefits while the US's doesn't. This is the main expenditure for these governments.
Not saying that your argument has not some truth in it, but it's definitively wrong in the case of healthcare.
It's not in the top 5 by number of patients treated.
Anecdotally I met people who went to Germany, Israel, India and Thailand for treatment, I never heard of anyone even discussing going to the US. The visas alone are a nightmare.
I see someone shifting the goalposts here, first we were saying that US healthcare is not worse in any metric, then we started measuring it's success by medical tourism, now are down to some special rare diseases.
Let's come back to where we were before, measures per unit of money spent, US healthcare delivers worse outcomes that any other developed nation. Measured in average health of its citizen, the outcomes aren't great. Life expectancy, and other metrics aren't particularly amazing.
> to the point that the U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination.
Of course, if you have the money to fly to the US, stay in the US and pay out-of-pocket for a medical procedure in the US, then yes, the US is a good destination. Which translates into: if you're rich, medicine in the US is great.
However, not all of us are rich. And definitely not all Americans are rich.
>Americans cite cost savings as the most common reason to go abroad for health treatment, as medical procedures in foreign hospitals can cost thousands of dollars less than in the United States. This is especially true for those without health insurance—for an uninsured person, a knee replacement can cost
$30,000 in the United States, compared to $12,000 in India. Many health travelers also go abroad for elective procedures such as cosmetic surgery that regular policies may not cover.
In other words, they largely go outside the US to save money on either cosmetic or routine procedures that, for one reason or other, US insurance won't cover.[1] Not same thing as the earlier discussion of rare or difficult conditions.
[1] Or they've chosen to not get health insurance. Post-Obamacare, this means that they are willingly paying the tax penalty for not having insurance. 91% of Americans have health insurance.
> Not same thing as the earlier discussion of rare or difficult conditions.
There was no earlier discussion of "rare or difficult conditions".
> 91% of Americans have health insurance.
That health insurance is often tied to the employer and wildly varies in what it offers. And you have to fight insurance tooth and nail to get what you need. Even on a good insurance.
In 2020, 8.6 percent of people, or 28.0 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year.
The percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2020 was 91.4.
More children under the age of 19 in poverty were uninsured in 2020 than in 2018. Uninsured rates for children under the age of 19 in poverty rose 1.6 percentage points to 9.3 percent.
--- end quote ---
I can't imagine a European saying "yeah, we have 28 million uninsured, many of them kids, it's their own fault".
> You did not believe the 91% figure I provided, so frantically looked for evidence to support your presupposition that only the top 1%
Stop inventing arguments for other people, and then bravely fighting these arguments.
> found that the 91% figure is indeed accurate, so could only come up with the above as riposte.
Yes. It's a valid riposte: I cannot imagine a European proudly "debunking" something by saying "yeah, we have 28 million people uninsured, it's their own fault"
> The US mixed system of public and private healthcare coverage is quite similar to the system used in Germany, Switzerland, and other countries
It's not.
> Before Obamacare, about 85% of Americans had health insurance.
Before, during, and after Obamacare 100% Europeans (well, not entirely true [1]) have insurance
> or a German who changes jobs and neglects to transfer coverage to a provider that serves his new industry.
Your medical insurance is not tied to your job in Germany (or anywhere in Europe).
> Yes, 85%. Again, contrary to what Reddit told you.
You keep inventing arguments for your opponent and bravely debunking them. The only numbers I provided are taken directly from US Census.
[1] some (8 in 2016, 4 in 2020) countries in the EU have lower insurance rates. However:
- these countries keep increasing coverage or implementing reforms to bring universal healthcare (Cyprus an Ireland)
- even "uninsured" still have free access to emergency care and care during pregnancy (e.g. Romania)
>Yes. It's a valid riposte: I cannot imagine a European proudly "debunking" something by saying "yeah, we have 28 million people uninsured, it's their own fault"
The US is a country of 330 million. I can say that out of 80 million Germans at least 2-3 million (3%) are without health insurance. Is that something to be "proud" of? Or, as I said, are such gaps inevitable in any health-insurance system that a) requires some sort of membership (i.e., almost all developed countries outside the UK NHS), plus b) the US's unique situation of another 3-4% without health insurance inherent from having 10 million illegal aliens within its borders?
>> The US mixed system of public and private healthcare coverage is quite similar to the system used in Germany, Switzerland, and other countries
>It's not.
In what way are the systems greatly different? In both the US and Germany/Switzerland/etc., people obtain insurance from either a variety of private sources (in the US, nonprofit or for-profit) or public (in the US, Medicare, Medicaid, military Tricare, Indian Health Service). Post-Obamacare, the US also mandates that those without insurance obtain it from some source, whether public or private.
Now, you may quibble and say that the hundreds of German sickness funds are not really "private" because they are nonprofit, but they are independent from the government like their US counterparts, both nonprofit (example: Kaiser) and profit (example: Aetna). Both countries' systems differ from, say, the UK NHS (which handles both payment and delivery), the Canadian single-payer system (which handles payment, with no alternative allowed by law), or the Australian system (single-payer, but with a heavy emphasis on encouraging people to move to private plans).
>Your medical insurance is not tied to your job in Germany (or anywhere in Europe).
I didn't say that insurance in Germany is tied to one's job. However, German coverage offerings, providers, and types of providers (public or private) differ depending on whether one is an ordinary private-sector employee, a government employee, or student. Also, German employers pay for part of employees' premiums, as in the US.
>- even "uninsured" still have free access to emergency care and care during pregnancy (e.g. Romania)
This is true as well in the US; the EMTALA law prohibits turning away anyone from hospitals regardless of ability to pay.
- German public insurance is priced according to income, not health condition. Preconditions aren't a thing°
- You know that the treatment is covered before it begins. There are no surprise costs. There are rarely any costs at all, except for a 5-10€ deductible that cannot go above a certain monthly amount.
- It covers your dependents for free.
- It covers students for very cheap.
- It covers you in all of the EU, by law. This includes internships abroad.
Basically, you can trust your insurance to fully cover all necessary care, with no exceptions.
Re-read what you replied to: they were talking about "the average American", not the richest ones.
The total societal outcome -- spending vs outcome -- and therefore the average outcome too, for the USA as compared to most other developed countries... Pretty much sucks.
The US government provides extensive retirement benefits similar to the EU in both type and dollar value. These are some of the biggest spending line items in the US budget: Social Security, Medicare, etc.
My US government provided pension will be something like $3500/month when I reach retirement age. This is in addition to any personal retirement savings.
20k of GDP per capita means in any year of your life, even after 65.
People migrate to the US before the EU. Besides, US lifestyle (also a high tax country btw) is not the only possible alternative to european style quasi socialism (56% on the way there)
The EU is not anymore quasi socialist than the US.
Incidentally I'd say most western countries are way too close to socialism, I'd rather see more private entities taking over security, healthcare and law making.
It's just that there is no money, so private EU companies suck so there is no money.
The lack of strong companies doesn't imply socialism. Most people in Europe has most of their trade interactions with other individuals and private businesses.
Society and the world at large doesn't revolve around individuals. Despite not having had any major health expenditures myself (for now), I have absolutely no problem with supporting a system that allows for those less fortunate to not have to worry about it, among other things. Frankly, anything else is simply barbaric.
The majority (or easily over 80%) of the EU's high taxation incomes are not being spent solely to support the people who can't afford their own healthcare or on those who are truly in need of that money, so that argument is pointless.
Unless you are a millionaire you can't live well in EU. If you are just a regular tech worker advancing in your career can actually reduce your salary because of the tax brackets.
It's quite off-puting branding, playing with the flag of a bureaucratic institution like the EU.
If it was about what Europeans create, I would be receptive. Instead, they are promoting whatever is in the European Commission agenda, which is radically different to what I need.
Is 15k extra per year an effective boost to happiness?
Is 15k enough to keep working for Big Brother, in a job with very limited freedom, professionally and socially
Is 15k enough to keep working in a company that keeps users addicted to unhealthy behaviors?