As a German I of course (quite irrationally) like the praise for "my" country (I actually feel I'm human, and being German is just birth luck, especially since I benefited enormously from the reunification).
On the other hand, OP has a point. This is once more an example of what works for anyone vs. what works for everyone. The countries you name all are very small. Imagine Asia getting even better (they probably will), and imagine African countries getting their act together (as unlikely though it may be). Who would buy all those machines and parts?
Also, another great potential for future trouble is that an oversized part of our economy is bound to making cars. The "Zulieferers" (component suppliers) are much larger than the actual car makers, and they are all "Mittelstand". If they have to find new customers some day... electrical cares require a lot less expertise and less parts I'm told, plus ever more "growth", meaning ever more cars, isn't such a promising model (looking at Asian city traffic...).
To get an impression I think it's a good idea to start with these pictures taken from the ISS [0], which is at about 400 km altitude (it varies a bit but not that much)
Note that they are to the side, straight down you would see a much smaller area!
So the SpaceX satellites would be three times higher. Still, you can see you may need quite a few stations on the ground, and also why you need so many satellites. They will fly over the area very quickly and by then the communication will already have to have been handed over to the next one. There is so much earth to cover, with satellites much higher up you cover a much wider area and you can have them in a stationary orbit. Earth has a diameter of 12,742 km, I have to keep reminding myself that even the ISS is barely above the surface if you were to look at earth from a distance.
Whenever you have such a complaint - and choose to make it public - please include more details. What system, what browser, add-ons (adblocker) at least.
EDIT: Downvotes? For answering the question truthfully? It does work for me. The question was (is) "is anyone else unable to scroll on this page?" -- and I have no problem scrolling. I answered the question! The question was NOT "do you think the page is designed badly". If that is what was meant, that is why I said "needs more details". All the person asked was about "being able to scroll"! And the design issue does not prevent it. I answered the question that was actually asked! I assumed, and still do, that the person isn't able to scroll at all.
It's got odd scrolling. If the mouse is over the top banner, and you scroll the scroll wheel (or I assume pull down on mobile?) then the page doesn't scroll (this is on Chrome, on Windows 10).
The scrollbar is also hidden behind the top banner in some way, which suggests it's doing something non standard.
Why do people want to fiddle with the most basic UI/X idiom on the net?
> just like the 10x CEO. They just make the right decisions and hence are compensated accordingly.
A lot of being a successful CEO is being at the right place at the right time (of course: in addition to actual qualities).
Anecdote time:
I once was a franchisee of a major (services) franchise that some time ago decided to expand to Germany (I sold my franchise years ago). I'll only talk about one person, but this happened throughout the network, it wasn't nearly as successful as hoped in this country.
So anyway, I personally know one of the guys who lead one of the best franchises in a major German city. He expanded, became responsible for the entire wider area (which allowed him a cut from all franchises in it in exchange for recruiting new franchisees and for advising them).
He had this exact opinion (and he was a former business consultant too, I think he even has an MBA), when a franchisee didn't do well that he just wasn't good enough. He himself was proof, after all, just do your customer acquisitions and all the necessary stuff,and success will eventually come! It worked for him!
When a franchisee failed he acquired their shop, it was in the same city and they seemed to be in very good areas, lots of businesses that fit the description of the target market. Not a big risk one would think given that his own shop was doing exceedingly well with the exact same demographics, just a few miles away.
Long story short, he ended up giving up the franchise for the area as well as the two additional shops he had acquired. Today he has just that one original location. Turned out that the exact same extremely successful guy only managed to be successful in one spot. Not even in very promising areas just a few miles away did it work out!
There were more stories like this, some of them I knew personally (through franchisee training at the beginning where I met many of them), all people who were formerly employed and "important people" in their jobs, and who all thought that it's all about you and the effort and skills you put in. Some of them managed to indeed build a successful business, but they all became much more humble over time, because they all found the large amount of randomness in their success when they tried to expand (area franchise or another shop).
So, tell me again about those successful CEOs, I'd like to learn more... the books are full of such people, successful in one place and time and failing in another place and/or time. Because they themselves are only one ingredient into what is needed for success, and not even the major one ("necessary but not [even nearly] sufficient").
I'm not sure that would help much. I think the risks and uncertainties of long-term R&D increase much faster than any tax incentive can compensate for. My favorite story is the (real) history of Silicon Valley. I once thought that was a proof for what private enterprise can accomplish. Turns out that SV is actually based on the unrestrained spending on R&D (of borrowed money, of course) by government during WWII. [0]
Private enterprise wants a level of certainty, long-term or not. Tax incentives don't reduce the uncertainty. I doubt that money is the major constraint. Look at some major corporations basically "swimming" in money, and they also should be able to borrow easily (and cheaply) at this time.
I think OP succumbed to the problem of shifting baselines. The brain adapts and sets the base to whatever your situation is, eventually. You live in a huge house? After a few months you stop noticing it and instead start seeing the small little issues. The rich guy and the poor guy are going to complain equally. Satisfaction and contentment go back to their equilibrium value. Having the Harvard MBA becomes the new normal, life seems equally hard, because you compare with your own new baseline, not with that of other people. Doesn't mean OP can't objectively be correct in his assessment that this MBA did nothing for his employability, because that depends on what he wants to do. But did his goals shift (upwards) too, setting a higher baseline? Seems very possible.
> "Salary" and "organizational breadth" are pretty objectively measurable things, and are what I'm using as a measuring stick.
That is such a narrow world view. Nor does it change anything I wrote. Nor does you reply make sense, you wrote
> My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability.
That is inconsistent with what you just wrote, something completely different. I'm sure you are aware that humans come up with explanations after decisions? Shown in fMRI scan experiments. I'm not saying this explains what you just did, but it does seem to me that your brain came up with this "explanation" only after discovering my post.
> I don't want to mention the name of the university.
Preposterous, given that you have total anonymity and anyone reading your extremely general rant without any details would have any idea who you are. I was willing to accept your comment as an opinion based on your personal experiences, but after this turn in the discussion I can't take you seriously, because it's obvious that you are creating a lot of drama that doesn't actually exist. Posting the name of the university is a non-issue - unless you fear people who are actually there might dispute your claims... given the very general and broad claims you made you must be incredibly well-connected to a lot of people in a lot of different departments at that university. Not easy to believe even without your refusal to give a simple name to the place.
I can speak for a different market in a different country (but I also lived in the US for a decade): IT freelancing in Germany.
I get paid well, but there is something really strange going on: I can't get my contracts directly. I always have to go through a company whose sole business it is to be an intermediate between the (large) company that wants to hire a freelancer and the freelancer. Note that those freelancers are not employed by that company and the relationship is pretty loose. The business pays the intermediary and they pay you, it's a per-project contract.
The large companies won't hire someone directly even though they would save lots of money (and freelancers would get more). Suspicious as you guys are you probably think that well, there must be a logical business reason that it actually really is worth the additional money being spent on the intermediary. For example, finding and bundling lots of freelancer resumes. While that sure is a reason it isn't nearly sufficient for an explanation, not only because they actually do precious little for the money they keep. Also, the legal side can't be the reason either when I look at how the contracts between me and the intermediary are set up.
To give one example from a very large client I worked for for 1.5 years as a freelancer, the reason I was told they go through the intermediary is that it makes their accounting much easier. Since I once worked for that company and experienced the exact same thing I was not surprised: When I worked for them in Silicon Valley I saved the company a lot of money by looking for an apartment myself. I ended up sharing one with somebody else. However, the expensive all-inclusive one-bedroom apartment I had had in Mountain View had the advantage that there only was a single bill (paid by corporate Amex card). The (far cheaper) shared apartment I got instead produced a handful of different invoices (furniture rental, cheques for the rent instead of Amex, etc.), so the company told me they would have preferred to pay the much higher amount from a single source. Which I don't quite understand - I do have some business background and understand accounting, in the computer age, what's the big deal? In the freelancer scenario they said it just works better with their SAP system then having lots of individual contracts. That company also had a big program to "streamline" and centralize their purchasing, which of course means having significantly less firms to deal with as a goal that overrides other concerns.
So, it seems the large businesses prefer to work with other large businesses, no matter how much money they could save. We don't even need to argue whether and/or how much legal and business reasons are valid or not, I think the only thing that matters for the purpose of the discussion is that the effect exists, and that that means "market" is more and more a lie the more of a countries wealth creation is done by big businesses. You don't need to look for actual "monopolies" in the classical sense, those firms quite voluntarily restrict themselves (and again, the bottom line is that it exists, how justifiable it is from the individual firm's POV is a different question, let's assume they know what they are doing and that it makes sense for them).
When large corporations are comfortable in their revenue side (approaching monopoly) they obsess over risk. Every contract poses a risk, including litigation risk. That's probably why. GE is obsessed with outsourcing right now, they even outsourced the mail room. A side effect is this promotes inequality as you can no longer get a job in the mailroom and work your way up to CEO. See the hbr ideacast on this
As I said, I think the focus for the points of this discussion is the effect. No doubt everybody acts logically, I didn't suggest that everybody in those companies just lost their mind. This goes long the same lines as "For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to respond rationally to incentives." (so here it is the loss of ever more "market" in the "market economy" that we get as an effect, and it's questionable we get it back in economies of scale, judging by the popularity of Dilbert cartoons).
Not that I'm aware of in the context that my examples are from. They pay for independent(!) freelancer programmers and consultants, should be the same except for having just a single partner instead of many.
On the other hand, OP has a point. This is once more an example of what works for anyone vs. what works for everyone. The countries you name all are very small. Imagine Asia getting even better (they probably will), and imagine African countries getting their act together (as unlikely though it may be). Who would buy all those machines and parts?
Also, another great potential for future trouble is that an oversized part of our economy is bound to making cars. The "Zulieferers" (component suppliers) are much larger than the actual car makers, and they are all "Mittelstand". If they have to find new customers some day... electrical cares require a lot less expertise and less parts I'm told, plus ever more "growth", meaning ever more cars, isn't such a promising model (looking at Asian city traffic...).