What about the millions of eastern / central europeans that have lower wages and worse quality of life and have been denied to work in german markets when the countries have been allowed to join the EU ?

I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

Thanks Germany.

The combination of "what about related controversy X" with inflammatory language ("Thanks Germany") is guaranteed to produce a political flamewar. Please don't do that here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452885 and marked it off-topic.

The posting of this article was guaranteed to produce a political flamewar.

That doesn't excuse the commenters who made it so.

Does it excuse the mods who let it through?

If you allow politically contentious articles, you're going to get politically charged discussion. Articles representing a left-wing worldview are let through and right-wingers are blamed for "starting flame wars" when they interject something that shows their own worldview.

HN should either commit to open discussion or declare itself officially a no-dissent-allowed Safe Space.

That description is false.

More importantly, you have no standing to argue about what's appropriate on HN when you post dreck like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453898 in violation of the site's rules. I've asked you before to stop doing this. Please follow the rules from now on.

> I guess nobody cares. Oh nobody cares either about people that are educated and can't get working visa because EU bureaucracy.

This. The elephant in the room. It is insanely difficult to migrate legally to most European countries.

I would say something else to the people that encourage others to basically enter Europe illegally to go to Germany.

There are people, in refugee camps, in Lebanon or Turkey, that want to follow the law and apply for asylum while staying in these camps( because that's how it is supposed to work at first place, applying for asylum in the first safe country).

What about them ? So people who break the law and cross multiple European countries illegally are welcome, but those who want to respect refugee laws by staying in camps until their status is cleared will be rejected because too many coming to Europe already and all sits are taken? That doesn't sound fair at all.

This whole debacle is hypocrite on so many level, I will never support anyone who agree with it. You're not helping those who are in greatest need to be helped ( women,children, it's obvious they are not the majority of the people walking across Europe right now).

Well this is the problem any country with a large illegal immigrant population faces. Far too many in the political establishment don't want to be perceived as mean spirited and deport or block the illegals yet the unintended consequence is that those who seek legal immigration are harmed as are those who already are either citizens and recent immigrants as the pool of assistance monies and goods is diminished.

This is also a result of the current view to not interfere enough to fix the situation these illegal and legal immigrants face at home. Nation building has fallen out of favor and the result in anarchy is many parts of the world. Violence goes unchecked and with lax to no enforcement people risk their lives to get somewhere else and will try to get where the best support system exists.

> have been denied to work in german markets

That is illegal and a violation of treaty obligations on Germany's part if the countries you're talking about are part of the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area (EEA).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_worker...

You don't need a work visa or any sort of permission from the German government to reside and work in Germany, if you are a EU citizen or a citizen of an EEA member. It is a right.

There were laws restricting that during a temporary period after countries joining, but I think they all faded out in 2011 or so, without much changing afterwards.

Germany was struggling with the reunification, having added 20 Million people from a collapsed country, the German Democratic Republic. That was difficult enough.

Currently there are no special labor restrictions for EU citizens in Germany.

It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together. The reason East Germany was merged into West Germany was that it was effectively defunct.

East Germany had mostly sustained itself by forbidding people from leaving the country (under threat of death), forcefully keeping its citizens in line (via ubiquitous surveillance and extortion) and frequently selling captives ("traitors" and "collaborators") to its next-door neighbour.

Heck, the entire country had been ransacked before it was even created. While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.

> It's easy to forget that the German re-unification wasn't simply two countries merging together.

It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR.

> While the US and its closer allies limited themselves to seizing high-tech and research after WW2, the Soviets transferred a large part of the industry and factories out of Germany as reparations.

The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.

The US soon wanted their part of Germany as a future ally against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union needed the German factories/etc., because they suffered large scale destruction in the western parts. Germany destroyed large parts of the USSR infrastructure where it could.

> It's not. The Bundesrepublik Deutschland took over what was once the GDR.

Exactly. The GDR was dissolved, the FRG simply swallowed the remnants.

> The US and its allies transferred as much as the soviet union from Germany - though from a larger zone.

I'm not arguing the morality of it -- Nazi Germany had wreaked havoc in the USSR (and some Germans were surprised to see how well the soldiers treated them considering how badly the Soviets had been treated by Germany).

But the industry of East Germany was demolished to a far greater extent than that of West Germany. I'm well aware of the plans for West Germany that were discussed prior to the decision to grow it into an ally (rather than to de-industrialize it beyond insignificance).

My point is simply this: while West Germany had become an economic powerhouse deeply integrated into European and international economics, East Germany's economy was largely a farce. By the time the borders were opened, the country was heading for disaster.

What's more, after the reunification most of what little industry East Germany had moved to the West. It took a ton of state funding to get the east of Germany to where it is now and it's still largely defined by large-scale unemployment and an ageing population (because the young adults always seek greener pastures).

In other words: yes, Germany is a powerful economy. But East Germany was nothing like that and naturalizing all East Germans as citizens and even exchanging their devalued currency at ridiculous rates was an enormous expense.

You raise an interesting point, but the refugee 'crisis' is not driven by rationality, history, culture or even morality.

It's a sad, numb and nihilistic political game.

Why is that?

I am German - and I support the acceptance of refugees because of rationality, history, culture and especially morality.

I also support receiving them, but it is a political game. It would have made more sense to help a much larger number closer to home in countries where we could help far more people for the same amounts of money and while putting them at less risk.

The problem is that a lot of the people talking about helping them closer to home have no intention of doing so - it's an excuse not to spend money at all. It is suddenly important to help them nearer to home now, when the problem is not "contained" anymore.

Having them come to the wealthier EU countries helps drive home the seriousness of the crisis in a completely different way. Most people in Europe seems to have had no understanding of how many people need help, and have had an easy time writing these crises of as something happening far away.

That's why this is a political game. On both sides.

You morally accept them but can't functionally accept them. And morals have this downside of interfering with others in an unfair and dangerous ways. Sweden and rapes for a clear example.

>What about the millions of eastern / central europeans

Have you forgotten about the Yugoslav wars? About half a million of refugees went to Western Europe (mostly Germany and Sweden) in just a couple of years.

I really don't know what you're referring to. How have Eastern/Central EU migrants been denied access to German labour markets?

a) apples and oranges

b) As far as I know none of these intra-EU restrictions are still active (not that much of the numbers changed after their end, so they probably were really pointless)

worse than getting killed by a bomb?

I'd be curious to see the percentage of migrants/refugees that are coming from war-torn regions such as Syria. My understanding is that many come from North Africa or elsewhere. Granted violence is also very high in these areas and the economic situation can be nearly as detrimental to quality of life.

I volunteer in a refugee center. Right now about 70% of the people arriving are from Syria. Most others are from Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look at statistics, remember that they often lag behind and currently show a large percentage of refugees from Albania, although that wave happened early in the year and has largely passed.

in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king How much time can a man invest in learning a really complex stuff so he can work on compilers, creating programming languages or implementing extraordinary search algorithms. And who will pay for that ?

That is the downside of capitalism.

Just take a look at what happened to Oracle when the most brilliant engineers left after they acquired Sun Microsystems. They literally could not find anyone for ages to replace these people just because there is not enough talent out there.

And that's Oracle. Who else is there that can afford to pay these people ? Google ? Maybe. Netflix ? aye IBM ? likely And maybe few dozens of other corporations.

But these people do not want to work for corporations instead they need to be treated as special unicorns.

Hi i think bounceplan is just too expensive for what it does and you do not even have an apps for at least iOS & android.

I think in order for you to make it work make it as a service for travel agencies that can buy this and provide it to their clients as a bonus.

Or even lowering the price would help. I can't imagine somebody would pay 14$ for this kind of thing. 2$ per month is real but this ..

First of all you need to make people want to use your app. After that you can expect them to pay for it. But even stating 14$/m in pricing section can scare a lot of people.

Thank you for your feedback. It is appreciated. :)

Each situation I unique, but before modifying the prices read the patio11 "raise your prices" advice: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=patio11%20raise%20your%20price...

Thank you gus_massa for the link and the feedback. I understand completely. I don't plan on lowering the price. People are signing up and I'm taking in feedback from my target market and moving forward with my improvement schedule. Sometimes things aren't always exact but we get there. :)