Category: Daily

The common refrain in policy circles is deafening: “We must make it easier to start and run a company.” Deregulation, a simpler tax system, etc. is all necessary…

But is that really solving anything?

I’m not convinced. If you look back at the fastest growth periods of the USA, China, or Germany, they weren’t particularly famous for “super simple company formation” or the ease of daily operations. In fact, despite modern bureaucracy, the internet has arguably made the logistics easier today than ever before.

We are optimizing for the wrong variable. What we actually need is a high tolerance for risk and failure. We need engineers and scientists starting companies—not MBAs pursuing PE-style acquisitions or internet entrepreneurs building copycat commoditized products.

And because of that, I think one of the greatest growth periods for Germany could be right ahead of us.

Why am I (very) carefully optimistic about Germany over the next 20 years?

For the past two decades, massive talent (and intellectual property) has been locked up in legacy Mittelstand giants – Bosch, ZF, Siemens, VW, etc. These companies employ engineers, inventors, and extremely smart people. However, under current employment contracts and comfort levels, these individuals would be “stupid” to quit, no matter how stagnated the leadership becomes.

The more these giants struggle, the more innovation Germany will produce.

If you ask me, the problem is a big part company leadership (within these giants but generally overall in the German Mittelstand) and real talent being trapped in these big companies with their IP being buried and never commercialized.

We cannot ignore taxation. A common thread during historical high-growth periods is very low or zero social security “taxes.” These social systems are almost always built after a country gets rich.

Conversely, high-growth periods feature very low taxation on equity upside. Today, in both Germany and the USA, we have the opposite.

What is the result?

• Founders optimize for “get rich quick” schemes.
• We build lifestyle cash-flow companies and predictable service based businesses
• We do not build 50-year conglomerates that employ 100,000 people and invent new industries.

It is pathetic that real estate is now considered the best “investment” – which basically mean returns guaranteed from regulatory scarcity.

I’m not entirely optimistic, however, because we face endless other problems across the entire West (USA and Germany alike):

1. Demographic Collapse: Nobody is having babies.
2. Nostalgic Leadership: Leaders like Trump and Merz seem to work toward the preservation of long-gone greatness rather than future innovation
3. Avoiding Hard Problems: We don’t attempt to solve the hard physics problems anymore.
4. Cultural Punishment: As Eric Weinstein notes, we have a culture that punishes anyone who actually tries to solve complex issues.

Despite all the optimism for the United States. If we are fully honest: What is actually being built in Silicon Valley? How many “Zero to One” companies exist that aren’t total frauds? Even in Thiel’s Founders Fund portfolio, the list is shorter than we’d like to admit. In Germany, that number is hopefully not zero, but who knows?

Returning to my perspective on Germany: I fear the best path forward – besides removing red tape – is actually allowing all zombie companies to die and all Mittelstand giants to struggle, restructure, and lay off people.

If I were Chancellor, I would use the new debt capacity in a radical way:

1. Radical Labor Reform + UBI

Change labor laws so that ANY company can lay off whomever they want without any justification immediately. To balance this, the state provides an immediate Universal Basic Income to anyone affected (or perhaps, to everyone).

2. Aggressive Deregulation

Change regulatory bureaucracy so that it is easier to invest, raise capital, and distribute equity in Germany than in any other nation on Earth.

3. Unleash the Drive

This mix would release massive talent that suddenly has an inherent DRIVE to be productive. They would start companies or join existing or newly started ventures that actually commercialize IP rather than letting it gather dust on a corporate shelf.

4. The Demographic Push

And while doing so? I’d make it socially unacceptable to not have babies. Placard every public ad space with sweet baby photos while giving influencers with 3+ babies massive tax benefits.

One is for sure: “business as usual” is no longer an option.

Today, the largest opportunities arise from people living in the past. Obvious trends, like the exponential advancement of solar PV or electric vehicles, are irrationally badmouthed. There seems to be a longing for bringing back nuclear power, for bringing back manufacturing, for bringing back workers into offices, for bringing back military dominance. People still believe in college degrees, in standardized testing, credentialism in hiring, pension funds, the list goes on. Politicians try to compete with China, want to bring back supply chains, want to revive 40+h workweeks originating from the industrial revolution. This conservative nostalgia seems to be a large trend; or perhaps it has always been.

What has worked 20 years ago will not miraculously come back. Politicians are selling “the good old days” to people not aware of current reality – of how incredibly fast exponential technologies and societal changes are evolving.

The opportunities of today and the future are not in chasing the resurrection of the past but in identifying which underlying needs from those eras remain unmet in modern forms.

For example: People don’t want manufacturing jobs back. They also don’t want to out-manufacture China. Who really wants to labor in a factory? Who wants to work 10 hours a day on a farm? The answer is: nobody really. What people do want is economic security and a trade balance that doesn’t feel like losing. They want protection from foreign economic coercion, and the dignity of creating tangible products the world needs.

Another example: People don’t want coal plants or nuclear plants back. Who really wants polluted air or nuclear waste in their neighborhood? Again, the answer is: nobody really. What people actually want is affordable energy independence – which means electricity too cheap to meter – and a reliable baseload and a reliable grid during crises and days where the sun isn’t shining.

The pattern is always the same: the surface demand is to reverse time; it is nostalgia. The underlying need is mostly emotional and social: security, dignity, control, identity.

The opportunity is satisfying these needs through forward-looking solutions that people haven’t yet recognized as substitutes. It is in building for a world as it is, not as people wish it were. It is in accepting current reality the fastest and having the longest runway to build what’s actually next.

Every time I wish the minds I admire would open up and show the full depth of their thoughts, ideas, and experiences, I realize – I’m doing the same thing by staying too silent online.

The idols I look up to – for example Ido Portal, Bruce Poon Tip, Dr. Nun Amen-Ra, my Sifus, countless peers – are all masters of mind and body in private but leave little or no footprints online. The wisdom is real, yet it’s undocumented and the world barely sees it.