15 years ago I thought the Germans were the smartest people in the world because they understood the importance of investing in public services and had a central european style of capitalism that focused on fundamentals over financialization. since then they’ve slowly been adopting more neoliberal policies and making really stupid foreign policy decisions. I’ve lost a lot of respect for them as a world leader.
Oh no, that actually started way earlier!
The DB was supposed to be privatized in 1994, that failed. So now we have a stock based company (AG), lead like a profit oriented company, but owned 100% by the state.
Since 1994, the entire company was (due to incompentence and wrong incentives) driven on attrition. The best example: if a bridge needs repair, that’s DB’s expense, but if the bridge has to be rebuilt, the state pays. So what would any smart CEO do? Stop maintenance, wait for the bridge to fail and then have it repaired on the state’s bill.
I’m German and have been in France quite often in recent years. It’s fascinating to hear their opinions on Germany. Outside our country is still imaged as having great engineering, efficiency - that Trains run on time. It’s quite puzzling to me.
I came to the conclusion that the only real innovation in the last 30 years has been accounting. largely driven by neoliberalism. So every neo liberal country has kind of become more similar. Germany is not special, but has the advantage of having a lot of old successful companies that only slowly get sold of to international conglomerates. (Like Kuka etc). We behave as shitty as the rest, but our downward trajectory started higher up.
Modern computers and software made it possible to account for basically every item in a company with little cost. Before you’d have needed so many people and hours of work to judge profitability of small things that it wouldn’t have been sensible to do so. CAD-Software also enables a special kind of accounting - simulating hardware components enables engineers to judge which parts are necessary and how much thickness is really needed. This is a huge and complicated process of optimization.
Accounting made it possible to turn a mostly opaque company structure that ran inefficient (but mostly on par with the competition) and judge every employee, every item. That’s why supermarkets have outsourced the job of restuffing the shelves to a different company (that has to somehow make it work with the shitty pay that get). But it’s also the reason why appliances seem to hold just slightly over the warranty period. CAD-simulations made it possible for the accountants to change the products (make them shittier) so that people would need to buy new ones often.
The Deutsche Bahn is the same. Has made it possible to invest the smallest amount possible, because they realized they can just work with the deterioration infrastructure as well - most people don’t have a choice and have to take the late train anyways.
It’s the same with telecommunications here btw. With only few companys owning most Internet services they realized they don’t have to invest a lot into fiber. People need Internet and will have to pay anyways. It’s more profit to just raise prices.
Optimization feels a lot less optimal when it leads to enshittification. I have worked on the tech side of accounting systems in the US for the last 10 years and can say that American companies have largely embraced this category of innovation as well.
Interesting point of view - your accounting thing.
However, that doesn’t really fit to Deutsche Bahn, I think. Your point is rather about a Monopoly but an accounting exercise.
Yeah it was not specifically only about Deutsche Bahn, but also an observation about one of the multiple problems that drives the enshittification.
One Point that Deutsche Bahn definitely did was to find out which connections are mostly used by people ( tickets for these connections thereby contribute mostly to DBs revenue) and kind of abandon the less profitable connections. That’s accounting in my book.
What they did (counting passangers by rail-connections) wasn’t possible before, as DB-tickets were sold not electronically and couldn’t easily (cheaply / with little work-hours) be turned into data sets and analyzed.
IIRC tickets were priced much differently - they weren’t fixed to specific trains but to connections (no “Zugbindung”). So There wasn’t even (easily available) data to when most travellers were using the trains.
Today with all the data being generates automatically the accountains know much better what costs and what earns DB money and they prioritize based on that. Once you get into the habit of that even things that are obviously always costs (like fixing rails or bridges) will be outsourced or avoided. (like the supermarket example - it’s obvious that someone has to restuff the shelves, but once you have all the data and see only red numbers you try to separate it away and not do it (so it gets turned into a subcontract with probably unrealistic conditions that some other companies are underbidding each other in order to gain the contract - even if this means that their employees will not earn a living wage from it. It’s a perfect system that also pushes responsibility and blame away from the outsourcing company. they can always blame the sub contracting company for underpaying or not follow safety regulations (even if they can only fulfill the sub contract by operating this way)).
True. Accounting is the best friend of digitization.
However, it’s not always bad to look what makes sense or drive profit and what not. It’s rather a matter of how religious one is about it.
Take the second wave of computerism for example. What we call Digitalization. This is mainly driven by opportunities and chances of new business not so much about squeezing out the last percent of profit. This all is accounted as well, but management doesn’t care.
It is straight from the neoliberal privatisation playbook. Defund public infrastructure until the public complains, then “fix it” by privatising it
15 years ago I thought the Germans were the smartest people in the world
What you are describing is racism - positive racism but racism none the less.
German is not a race
There is only one human race (Racialization)
Racism is still a problem.
Hating to break it to you, but Attributing ANY group as a whole with positive/negative traits is racism. But keep mincing words - probably the only thing you are capable of?
Incorrect. Racism is the prejudice or discrimination of a person or people due to their racial or ethnic group. Not just any group. So no - attributing something to Germans isn’t racist.
I hate the word race as well, but Germans are an ethnic group (the definition is somewhat vague anyway).
Racism derives from the outdated race concept but sadly does not depend on its validity to exist.deleted by creator
That’s bullshit, there is no german ethnicity. We are all mixed up in Europe since ages, that comes from constant migration and redrawing oft boarders with every war. Beeing German is when you are born in between the corresponding borders. And, like stated before, there is still only one human race.
deleted by creator
Of course there is a German ethnicity… maybe get your facts straight first?
No. I just leave this here, from German Wikipedia. Translate it yourself.
„Unabhängig von seiner Herkunft oder Nationalität kann jeder Mensch von Rassismus betroffen sein. Das Internationale Übereinkommen zur Beseitigung jeder Form von Rassendiskriminierung unterscheidet nicht zwischen rassistischer und ethnischer Diskriminierung.“
When you turn the logo of Deutsche Bahn upside down, you’ll see their customer.
Omg, I never noticed. Thanks 😂
“Bad Day”
How do I hide these images?
They are getting pretty annoying.
Fork of one of the Lemmy frontends and add code to specifically hide the embedded images and then deploy it to your choice of hosting providers.
Or sent a PR to the main project that adds a config option instead
You can hide comments.
The web app Voyager hides them by default, as far as I can tell. You can sign into this with whatever instance account you’re using.
Infrastructure delivers more economic impact with less grifting when it’s not designed and run to make a profit on its own.
Right? When did we start becoming concerned with a public service being “profitable”? I’ve heard this applied to the US Postal Service a lot recently.
“The postal service is losing money!”
No, the postal service costs money. It’s a service. It doesn’t aim to make a profit. It costs money, and we are in turn rendered a service that is useful.
I swear people are delusional.
Conservatives want to kill the postal service because it competes with for profit services they own and invest in. See: DeJoy
Which of course is stupid, because USPS is actually great and provides a much better and more reliable service than any private competitor even in its current underfunded state.
When did we start becoming concerned with a public service being “profitable”?
Late 80s, early 90s, with the rise of the rise of the Chicago School of neoliberalism.
You want to put pressure on these things to make them more cost effecient. You’re in a capitalist system which does that job very well. But since this is not really a replaceable company, the government has to own these companies until they go public.
Depends how you calculate profit.
Exactly it’s not accumulating debt. It’s a service being provided to citizens.
Germans. Come to Melbourne Australia, and as you get off at the airport realise there is no connecting train to the city. Cabs only.
Brought to you by the cab industry/lobby.
Cab industry is the scum of the world.
Cars can do one.
There is a bus, but yeah, it’s a joke.
Yeah but the bus uses the same road as cars so other than being cheaper, you’re getting stuck with traffic
Or the one from Sydney that charges you 20 dollars on top of the normal fare just because. I’m on the outskirts of Sydney and I’ve given up on the train system, they’re either delayed, cancelled or running whenever they feel like it unscheduled now
Yeah the strikes and union action hasn’t helped either. Just give them what they want so we can go back to regular ish trains lol
Thank the christian democrats and Angela Merkel. I’ll have you know that people haven’t learned and that christian democrats are leading the polls once again.
Christian and Democrat seem opposite to me. Maybe it’s just an American thing.
Hmm… why wouldn’t christians be democrats? Is the democratic party in the US majorly atheist?
It’s more so that the republican party pushes more Christian ideals (usually the “bad” ones).
“A nation built on efficiency”. These times are looong over. We had a good run with our Wirtschaftswunder in post-WWII times and that’s about it.
Yes. But travel to other countries and hear their thoughts about Germany and you’ll discover this image is very much alive still. It’s important to spread the word outside of Germany, too.
Had some Germans visiting Norway recently. They said Germany is becoming way too individualistic. It’s a race to the bottom now. Liberalism has taken it’s hold, so efficiency will fade away.
The Wirtschaftswunder also had a lot to do with the Social Market Economy which, along with our train network, has been crippled by decades of neoliberal reforms.
The myth of Germany efficiency is slowly becoming unwound.
Come to Slovakia, where 30+ minute delays are the norm. Or to Greece, where railways are still operated by humans.
German efficiency is such an obnoxious myth
So what myths are your people fighting with?
Fascists like you, who mythologize conflict, the past, and suffering.
It’s all good though because SNCF is an order of magnitude worse.
In my experience and that of most of my friends both French and German, that is wrong. The French rail system may have its flaws (it does), but the German one is so much worse
In my experiences the SNCF Infra, rolling stock, station experience is…pretty good! Customer service on the other hand
Lol?
I’m German and travel regularily in France as well. Travelling in France by train is a JOY compared to Germany. Please ask around as many French living in Germany as you can find. Hear their opinions.
Lol! Come to hungary! Here the 30 min or even more delay is usual. While branchlines are closed due to the state railways dont have enough working diesels, as most of them are 40+ years old (or just soviet quality), and no money for new, as the EU stopped sending support, due to the corruption of the stateparty-government.
I’ve only been to Budapest and never used any intercity trains but the tram/streetcars have been way better, more on time and generally more available then anything in any German city
yes, IF you’re in the inner city. Else, if you live the outer parts of the city, or if you have to go there, you’re mostly doomed to ride on 30+ years old junk (or even see tram line 2 next to the parlaiment with those 60 years old not nice trams), with many transfers and long walks. But the transport in budapest handled by the (oppositional) city, not by the stateparty. However the stateparty takes as many money as they can from the city, just because the people in the city not voted them, so it’s hard to improve the city transfport without money.
Perhaps the Germans could start investing in coal powered trains?
100% German solution.
Edit: For everybody downvoting me, see Germany begins dismantling wind farm for coal.
