
In Estonia virtually every process is digitized - breck
http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/estonia-digital-life-tech-startups/
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unitboolean
Meanwhile, Germany is moving in the opposite direction. Taxes are increasing
and now Germany is the second highest taxed country in the world (according to
OECD). and freelancers here can't even work without a tax advisers who will
manage all their taxes, because the system is so complicated. Mobile internet
is extremely expensive. Just one day of using mobile internet in Germany will
cost you more than a a whole month mobile internet in Ukraine... everything is
very bureaucratic and a lot of paper work is required on every corner. and
don't forget, there are more than 300000 laws and rules for everything. I can
keep this list forever, but after all, I think I should just move to Estonia,
because Germany is definitely not for me.

~~~
adwhit
And yet.. Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world. I
guess being friendly to startups and freelancers just ain't that important?

~~~
tormeh
>Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world

Nope. Not even in the EU. Not even close. Where does this myth come from? Is
it that it has passed the UK per capita?

I mean, there are loads of nice things about Germany, and economic strength is
one, but that's a wild exaggeration.

~~~
orf
Well, it's the biggest capital exporter in the world (huge surplus) and is the
third largest exporter in total. It's also got the highest GDP in the EU by a
fair margin.

Per-capita in the EU is skewed by a fair number of very small but very very
rich countries. Luxembourg, the leader, being a tax haven and a population of
half a million (!!) does not make it the healthiest and best economy.

~~~
tormeh
Total GDP is irrelevant to everything. People use it like it means something,
and it's just annoying.

~~~
orf
Ok, that's quite convenient. What metric would you use? Because Germany has a
higher GDP per capita than the UK or France. It would be a hard point to argue
that any other country in the EU has a stronger economy than those three.

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silversmith
The article positions the Estonian ID number as something magical and superior
to SSN. In reality, out of the 11 symbols, 6 are governed by your date of
birth and another one denotes the gender, and out of the remaining four one is
a checksum digit.

The only way the Estonian system is better is that the law dictates this
number not to be treated as sensitive or identifying information, so you can't
get a loan on your neighbours name just because you caught a glimpse of his
passport.

~~~
shireboy
Can you explain this more? The ID number can't be treated as identifying
information? ID literally stands for Identifier- if not used as identifying,
how is it used? How does one identify themselves when getting a loan if not by
using their ID?

~~~
ProblemFactory
In the US, the Social Security Number is widely regarded as a "secret
password". Not as an identifier, but authentication credentials.

If you know the SSN and a few other personal details (like address and phone
number), you are assumed to _be_ that person, and can get access to their
accounts and sign up for credit cards or loans over the phone or internet.

But every company that uses SSN to authenticate you also must store the SSN,
it will be visible to their employees, and recently SSNs, addresses and many
other details of most adult Americans got leaked in the Equifax hack.

If this sounds completely crazy and insecure, it is. An ID number should not
be a password, it should be a public primary key. And some other method should
be used to actually authenticate the person - one that does not ever require
handing it over in plaintext.

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Animats
The Starship delivery robot is real, but it's not really operational. One can
be seen in downtown Redwood City, wandering around with a keeper following it.
It's been doing that for six months. They have a few in Estonia, a few in San
Francisco, and a few in London. All demos.

Starship reminds me of Better Place, the car battery swap company out of
Israel. Too much PR, too many demos spread around the world, not enough
profitable deployment. It looks like they're trying to make enough noise to be
acquired by Amazon and exit, rather than actually providing a service that
gets used.

~~~
mb_72
Starship is lauded as one of these 'Estonian success stories', but to me (as a
half Estonian / half Australian with I would hope to think a somewhat balanced
perspective) it seems like one of these 'solutions looking for a problem'
startups. When we have food delivered in Tallinn it's often by an older person
who is obviously making some extra cash to help ends meet; I feel better about
my 5EUR or whatever going to them than to some startup. The "person in a car"
solution, which can do multiple deliveries and also immediately handle at
least some product quality issues on the spot, seems like a fairly optimal
solution to me. Does the world really need a 10k robot to be delivering a $10
pizza? What happens when there is snow / ice / people messing with it etc etc?

"It looks like they're trying to make enough noise to be acquired by Amazon
and exit, rather than actually providing a service that gets used."

I could not agree more.

~~~
Animats
Nothing much came of it, but there was a Mercedes/Starship concept video.[1] A
van carries a number of delivery robots. The van makes a stop, and the robots
fan out and deliver to nearby locations. The robots return to the van, and it
goes on to the next stop.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0YtPjQ5WCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0YtPjQ5WCE)

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benevol
The flip side of this movement is of course even better profiling and mass
surveillance.

~~~
skeletal88
The government already knows a lot about you, doesn't matter if you live in
the US or Estonia or Germany. Having an ID number doesn't enable the
government to spy even more on it's citizens.

The ID card and id number make it safer than the alternatives.

