Hacker News

The German Mittelstand

20 points by Michelangelo11 ago | 4 comments

lz400 |next [-]

re: the crisis of the Mittelstand in competing VS China, I'm reminded of this tweet. It's a fictitious illustrative case not a serious study but I think it describes some of the root challenges of western industrial culture when it comes to competing against China

https://x.com/AngelicaOung/status/1921364873444986888

Incipient |root |parent [-]

I don't think the fundamental premise is much of an issue - it's what a (mostly) free market is meant to do. Someone sells a chair for $100, someone else believes they can sell it for $80, so they do. There are two main complicating factors (outside of brand reputation and possibly some others?)

1) quality - someone accepts the $80 chair which is a little bit more wonky

2) the $100 company spent a few years developing the technology to steam and bend timber to make the chair so they're marking up based on R&D and ip. The $80 chair company just copied the other tech

There is absolutely a lot of profiteering (charge what we can, not what we need to) happening, but honestly I believe that happens everywhere, including China (trivial case - wild price swings on aliexpress - they're maximising profits).

bluefirebrand |root |parent [-]

> There is absolutely a lot of profiteering (charge what we can, not what we need to) happening

I think that profiteering is the default behavior for companies. Maybe not all companies behave this way, or maybe in the past it wasn't the default behavior, but I'm very confident it is now

jonstewart |previous [-]

> Advancing the precedent set by Alfred, generations of Krupps would continue to develop the region through various private and public works, for almost a century into the 1920s. > > With their basic needs addressed and the workforce inculcated with the “Kruppianer spirit,” the firm crossed the fifth ring. They forged an empire that, by the late 1950s,

<insert Goose meme> “What did Krupp make in the 1930s?”

This was kind of an interesting article but could have been a great deal shorter and wasn’t particularly insightful.