Articles about Economy

Service Wasteland Germany—Reducing Costs

You might have already heard of the term Service Wasteland Germany (Servicewüste Deutschland). In case you haven’t, you will feel it if you will live in Germany one day.

Companies in Germany are—even more than politicians—fascinated by modernization and especially by reducing costs. However, not for the sake of customers, but instead for their own wallet. Moreover, the technology is often more complicated than communication with a person and it also cannot check the best variants all the time.

On the other hand it is only a matter of how much you are familiar with a specific technology, I am sure many people do not feel as easy as me when searching for prices on the internet, while I find it very handy. It is better than discussing with a clerk or using a vending machine, because I have all time I need at the PC.

Drawbacks of Machines

However, there are also concerns with regard to privacy when you buy your products via internet. For example, buying train tickets via internet or by credit card at the vending machine leads to the problem that the railroad company knows where you travel. If you pay with cash, nobody will be able to find out that exactly you have bought 7 tickets to Berlin, 5 tickets to Paris, one to Prague, two to Vienna etc.

Besides, if the machine does not work you really have a problem. Let’s stay with the example of trains: If you are at a train station and the vending machine is not working, you cannot buy a valid ticket. It is then your duty in Germany to search for a ticket inspector and tell your problem–immediately after entering. This would be easy if there were inspectors in all trains all the time, but sometimes you cannot find an inspector, because railway companies (not only Deutsche Bahn, but also smaller ones) want to reduce costs. I think you then should go to the train conductor, but I am not sure if that’s right or if you are not allowed to disturb him. And that’s when the problems arouse!

Content Customer will Return

German shops and service providers do not seem to understand that only content customers will return. An American study has shown that 100 uncontent customers could lead to 30 people not coming to the shop. This does not mean that all of these 30 people were really customers before, but they might have heard of other people how bad the service is and decide on going somewhere else.

Instead, they tend to see the possible loss of material value. I read a story where the children of a man had been criticized for only touching a package in a toyshop, not damaging it. This of course leads to a disappointed customer who might not come back to this shop the next time.

Switching barriers

Some companies also hope to find their luck in so called switching barriers which include both emotional and financial aspects. In an interview, the economist Joachim Büschken claimed that satisfaction was not a reason for customers to come back anymore, because other companies would copy your ideas quickly. Thus, according to him, it is more important to create so called hard switching barriers by menu navigation, proprietary adapters etc.

One example are printers which only work with their own cartridges: While the printer itself is pretty cheap, you have to pay a lot for the cartridges since you cannot switch anymore. The economist gives cars as a bad example, because each car is pretty similar and the user can handle each car by knowing one.

Of course, this attitude can be criticized a lot, because it makes world more complex and only focuses on the capitalistic view of economy.

Problem for our Psychic Condition

The reduction of social interaction is also a problem for our psychic, because by always communcating with machines we suffer from a lack of neurotransmitters for happiness. This means by always using machines for interaction we destroy ourselves.

A solution for this problem could be the human robots (called androids) developed by scientists in Japan (Repliee R1-Q2), USA (Albert Hubo) and South Korea (EveR-1). They act  and look like humans thus leading to a feeling as if we were talking with a real person.

One e-mail for 20 Eurocents

A long time ago, the German government presented a new idea: A reliable e-mail system, so that e-mails could be used for business communication. The name of this system is DE-mail and it is planned to include only a few certified e-mail providers.

One DE-Mail will Cost 20 Cents

However, Deutsche Post—one of the providers—now introduced they will charge your account with 20 Eurocents. Compared to a normal e-mail this is exactly 20 Eurocents more, because many e-mail providers offer accounts for free.

Compared to a standard letter with Deutsche Post for 55 Eurocents, this is much cheaper, but for only the transfer of some bits it is a lot. Of course this also depends on how many people will use the service and how many mails will be sent. Other providers meanwhile said they while make it cheaper. German ISP 1&1 mentioned 15 Eurocent, but they also added that “values of Eurocents were possible”.

Deutsche Post Failed with Lifetime e-mail

Some years ago, Deutsche Post wanted to start a service offering an e-mail account for your whole life, which also failed. The service was started in 2000 and stopped in 2005, because the “synergy effects they had hoped for did not become real”. Deutsche Post back then wanted to extend this system—for premium users—in a similar way as DE-mail by introducing “electronical certified mail”.

When the whole system did not work, Deutsche Post wanted to earn more money by offering advertisment free inboxes for paying customers. I am not sure, if POP3 was not common in 2003 or they added advertisment directly into the e-mail (like other e-mail providers do nowadays), but the idea didn’t seem to work.

Courts already Accepting normal e-mail

While the introduction of DE-mail is taking more and more time, courts are already starting to accept the normal e-mail system. This can of course be seen both positive or negative, but it is one big strike against DE-mail. If you have the choice between a free e-mail or a 20-Eurocent e-mail, both of them being legally accepted suficiently reliable, then the decision should be clear.

The Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf has accepted informational e-mails of an esteem agent as chargeable (the defendant has bought the house and therefore the treaty with the agent became legal).

A more discussable and maybe also ridiculous case is the judgement of the Regional Court Hamburg, which says that people have to anticipate written warnings via e-mail. This is of course a bit a problem, because many mails get just filtered by junk filters and the recipient does not know there should be such an e-mail.

For such cases (written warnings), a DE-mail could be useful, but who would open up an account just to wait for e-mails harming him?

Possible Surveillance

Due to several surveillance laws in the past months and years, there might be the possibility that the state wants to use this new method to gather easier access to sent and received e-mails. According to my knowledge end-to-end encryption should be supported, but only few people really use it. Therefore, the state would be able to reach business e-mails through only a few big providers.

The e-mails will be encrypted on the server, but this is only a encryption in the backend with the provider’s key. Therefore, the provider could also decrypt it easily and when the state forces the provider to do so, there is no way around it. If people use free providers then it is more complicated for the state, because he does not know all providers.

The Incredibly Dangerous Swine Flu

According to the WHO (World Health Organisation) cases of the so called “swine flu” or H1N1 or “new flu” are decreasing. Since October, when some people were still claiming that there would be a horrible second strike in winter, the number of infected people became constantly smaller. Around the whole world 14,142 people have died since March 2009 due to H1N1, which means that it was much less dangerous than normal flu. The same amount of people die every year due to the common influenza according to the Robert Koch Institut. However, critics say these numbers are not to be trusted, because they are used to influence people to get vaccination.

Germany still has to buy 34 million doses

Having ordered 50 million dose rates to be able to vaccinate 30% of the inhabitants (it was expected you have to receive 2 doses) Germany was now able to reduce this amount to 34 million. Instead of having to pay 416.5 million Euro it’s now expected that they have to pay 283.2 millions. Still, the new amount will be far too much and is a gift to pharma industry, as always the government acted in fear and panic without thinking about the costs. Compared to our current debts of more than 1.7 trillion Euro (1,700,000,000,000 €) this is nothing, but of course it always accumulates.

As of 2016 the government wants to reach a balanced budget, which was almost never reached (a news paper says two times since 1950, statistics say one time). You cannot take it amiss if people do not believe that the government will be able to reach their aim. Actually, I am wondering who controls if the state does not take too many new debts and what the consequences could be: The so called Schuldenbremse is nothing different than an EU law against too many new debts, just that no superior controlling institution exists.

Council of Europa Dealing with Topic

The Council of Europe begins analyzing the connections between pharmaceutical industry and WHO. The WHO has decided on a topic leading to investments of about 18 billion dollars worldwide, while the industry prepared for such a scenario knowing that the defition of pandemia was altered in a matter to exclude death rates and only check rate of spread.

However, it is always easy to make a lot of money based on fear. When the first hysteria due to SARS began, many people started buying security kits to protect themselves. The avian flu led to researches on vaccinations and the swine flu was the best point to make money from this product.

How IT Companies try to Circumvent Democracy

Recently there has been a decision about another special duty for being allowed to create private copies of media. This time it’s about computers, but not all computers. Currently, there are already duties on CD / DVD writers, the discs and hard drives which are then given to copyright associations, e.g. for music or text. It is a strategy of the German entertainment industry to denigrate each type of copy (they do not mention private copy, but they neither exclude it) and then demand compensation for the damage these “evil” private copies do to them.

However, this case is not about entertainment industry, at least not mainly. It rather is about companies who follow these claims just to achieve a better balance sheet at the end of the term. Even worse is that these huge companies also want to force other companies to do the same.

The range between 13 and 30 €

It has already begun some years ago with law suits between entertainment industry and PC manufacters. The entertainment industry claims they have a right on duties on each sold computer, which leads to a problem for the computer manufacters: They have to retain money just in case they lose and have to pay.

I read the number of 30 euros in a news paper, which they wanted to get rid of. It is a really huge difference if a company has to save 30 € per sold computer or ca. 13 €. Therefore, some major companies wanted to stop the law suits and sign a treaty with the ZPÜ, an association for copyright holders.

Working committee in their way

Yet, the working committee of the German association for IT, tele-communication and new media (BITKOM) was in their way. A report mentioned that 1 € was enough, but of course this offer was refused by ZPÜ. Therefore, the needed 2/3 majority could not be reached in a democratic voting. Since there would have been a normal majority, the executive committee tried to sign the treaty itself, luckily being stopped by two other IT companies.

The solution was the foundation of a new association called Federal Computer Manufacters Association (BCH). It seemed a bit strange when media reported that there had been a agreement between BCH and ZPÜ, because nobody had ever heard of BCH before—and now it’s clear: The BCH has been formed by seven companies who wanted to sign this treaty.

ZPÜ using its position

Instead of being confident the ZPÜ is now trying to use their advantage and demand even more duties on “similar devices”. This could mean a lot, but according to Frank Brunen, CEO of Belinea and opponent of the high duty, probably devices like “USB sticks, mp3 players etc. etc.” are meant.

Moreover, the BCH is trying to confuse people by mentioning that “PC manufacters and importers” now had to pay about 13 € for each sold computer to the ZPÜ. This was understood by some media as if each manufacter now had to pay 13 €. However, according to Brunen’s lawyer, BITKOM is in charge of the negotiations and a great number of participants would be needed to make it obligatory for everybody and these seven major companies—even though it’s Acer, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Medion, Samsung und Sony—are not even an average number.

Moreover, BITKOM wants to change its rules to require only normal majorities for such changes. This is done due to the huge pressure that these major companies have on the association paying much money to BITKOM. If BITKOM signed this treaty, this would be a huge defeat for the small PC retailers etc., because they are said to have good chances at Federal Court.

No Alcohol in Trains Anymore?

The small German railroad company Metronom will introduce an alcohol prohibition in their trains from November 15 on. People will then not be allowed to drink alcohol in the trains anymore.

The labour union of the police supports this idea and demands a prohibition of alcohol at train stations. They mainly think about a prohibition when there are big events like soccer games and festivals.

The biggest railroad company providing trains for all over Germany Deutsche Bahn claims that this idea would lead to some problems. For example, some drunken people could switch to their car and therefore endanger other people. Labour unions of railroad companies have forced a bigger security staff instead.

According to a survey of a German news paper, by now 53.2% are for a prohibition and 44.9% against it (1.9% undecided, 7936 participations by now).