OK this is going too far. Here's a short thread about understanding the French pension debate (1/7)

https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1637252163075203072

62 years is NOT the age at which everyone retires in France, it's the minimal age to retire with *full pension* provided you've contributed *enough quarters* (2/7)

1/ As a French citizen living in Germany, I know a thing or 2 about bureaucracy and what makes it work.

For a bureaucracy to function, you need rigidity/predictability as a general principle, flexibility/customization as a frequent exception.

Web3 has the former, not the latter

https://twitter.com/hkanji/status/1474204586747609093

2/ My wife @Vitolae & I have yet to find the way the German system provides flexibility by exception, but let me give you 2 examples of how the French bureaucracy works.

Example #1 is about dealing with someone behind a desk. At first, they’ll try to follow the rule and be rigid

1/ A thread about productivity and work-life balance—and why it's all about cultural differences.

Back in 1998-1999 I did a one-year internship at Siemens AG in Munich 🇩🇪 (where I live now).

Cc @Vitolae 2/ My job consisted in extracting technical information from German engineers to pass it on to French salespeople so that they could close deals with telcos on the French market.

As a result I belonged to 2 different chains of command: one in Germany, and the other in France.

0/ How politicians are messing up the vaccination campaign, creating frustration for doctors and citizens alike: the case of Germany 🇩🇪

[Thread 👇] 1/ My family and I live in Munich 🇩🇪

When @Vitolae and I (and our children) came here back in November, we had the impression of moving upward from a COVID-19 perspective—going from the worst places to the best (in Europe).

1/ The goal of a capitalist enterprise is not to create jobs, but to pursue increasing returns to scale—which tend to bring marginal job creation down to 0.

In turn, it generates a surplus that can then be allocated to creating many jobs in less productive parts of the economy. 2/ It's not about trickle-down economics. I'm not talking about the fat cats getting richer and then creating jobs.

I'm talking about what a capitalist enterprise actually generates: that economic surplus, the amount of value created and captured by a scaling business.

1/ People confuse two things: the market, and capitalism.

The market is about matching supply and demand 👉 It fosters competition.

Capitalism is about escaping the market so as to maximize return on invested capital 👉 It deters competition. 2/ It's not that the market is good and capitalism is bad.

The market is mostly good because it's about price discovery.

Capitalism is mostly good because it generates a surplus, so it explains economic development.

You want a little bit of both: market, and capitalism.

0/ Below are 10 tips to become a better writer.

It’s based on years of experience writing letters, essays, diplomatic cables, reports, books, op-eds, columns, blog posts and newsletters—both in French and English. 1/ Write everyday.

It’s otherwise known as the Seinfeld theorem (see below). Writing is like playing an instrument: the more you play, the better you get.

medium.com/the-mission/th…

1/ @colindickey I read your article ⤵️. Thank you!

Cc @matthewclifford @Noahpinion

To me, the feeling of agreement with @patrickc & @tylercowen question flows from the introduction of Joe Studwell's "How Asia Works".

medium.com/@colindickey_4… 2/ Back in the 1970s & 1980s many scholars contributed to articulating what came to be known as the "Washington Consensus"—a blueprint of what any country should do to raise the standard of living (that is, progress, as you wrote).

1/ @matthewclifford pointed to this ⤵️ in his last newsletter.

The reason for the misunderstanding here is that almost none of the relevant work that's done by academia is conveyed outside of the academic world, where it could make a difference in policymaking and business.

https://twitter.com/colindickey/status/1156276549521461249

2/ You need a slow and complex process of digestion (by think tanks and journalists, mostly) for this work to be made available where it can be translated into action.

It's even harder in today's world where neither think tanks nor the media inspire trust anymore. Cc @mgurri

1/ Can't agree more ▶️ Why did the Industrial Revolution start when it did? Why did Silicon Valley happen in California rather than Japan or Boston? Human progress is understudied, and @patrickc and @tylercowen want to change that.

theatlantic.com/science/archiv… 2/ My book "Hedge" was a modest contribution to that effort, and my daily practice at @_TheFamily is right where this new science of progress would be if it existed. Cc @LaureneTran12

amazon.com/Hedge-Greater-…

1/ People sometime ask me what the trade unions of the future will look like.

I always give the same answer: @LambdaSchool.

At first it doesn’t look like it’s a union, but... 2/ Indeed Lambda is effectively about:

• training and empowering workers

• helping them find a job, and making sure that it pays as much as possible

• providing them support all along their career, including by making them belong to a vibrant community of fellow workers
...

[A thread on 'Zombie Startups' in Europe]

Here's a paradox: the healthier the European startup ecosystem gets, the more difficult it is to make the difference between lively startups and zombie ones.

That's because there's now much more for the zombies to feed upon 1/

https://twitter.com/pastormhm/status/1046749460045471745

When I founded my own startup back in 2010 (in Paris, France), there were zombie startups all over the place. Mine eventually became one.

The process was simple, it went through three steps.

2/

1/ There's one thing that explains a large part of the current "tech backlash": the idea that all workers need to seek a higher level of skill.

We often hear politicians / economists lecture us on the importance of lifelong training for desperate workers who just lost their job. 2/ Western countries are the worst in that regard. That's because for them economic development during the 20th century has been synonymous with an ever more educated workforce. No wonder why lifelong education has dominated the political course so much in recent decades.

[THREAD] @Alice_zag, @daedalium and I founded @_TheFamily to pursue a simple mission: provide French (now European) entrepreneurs will all the resources they need to overcome the many obstacles they encounter while trying to build great tech companies. Advancing the cause of tech startups in Europe requires building a healthy ecosystem, a key part of which is to garner support (or at least not too much hostility) within government circles, academia, and the corporate world. cc @tfadell salon.thefamily.co/5-steps-to-a-h…