Why there are no beggars in Nuremberg
Why there are no beggars in Nuremberg
There are no beggars on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany. Or cigarette butts. Or coffee cups. This week, I learned why.
I was prepared for beautiful, blue-eyed Aryans, diesel cars, and Baroque castles. I was prepared for military barracks and a famous courthouse. What I didn’t realize is what separates our cultures makes theirs beautiful.
In Germany, the big hand provides generously. The small hands take willingly. Open palms are filled with all they can grasp — healthcare, lap pools, pretzels. Everyone is equal. These are all things I thought resulted from ignorance about capitalism. I left appreciating the opposite: they reflect the divine wisdom of socialism.
Where we each need to be first, they make sure nobody is last. While we think someone must lose for another to gain, they see profit in providing everyone with what they need.
My friend Mark works in IT at adidas. He was born in Nuremberg, raised in Texas, then returned to Nuremberg for high school. He’s an Eagles fan with a Nick Foles shrine on his desk. His three kids are growing up in a utopia with an exceptional bilingual education, opportunities to travel, and parents who take pride in how few hours they work.
Mark is home for wrestling practice on the weekdays and takes calls with me from the gym in between bench press reps. He can dead lift a Volkswagen, and perhaps I could too if my leisure hours weren’t spent feeding the one-armed bandit we call Silicon Valley.
Mark doesn’t worry about the size of his home or his 401(k) or where he’ll grow old. He’ll always have a home and a pension and his kids will graduate from college without debt. He worries about which lager to order while I worry about making orders larger. I thought him and all his neighbors lacked ambition and that the government’s largesse made them unproductive. I’m not convinced socialism is for everyone but I’ll never again assume we have a monopoly on happiness.
Mark will never take risks like I will. He won’t retire early or push himself professionally to find his breaking point. He’ll give back much of what he earns and get everything he needs in exchange. And maybe that’s not so bad after all.
The trip made me think… what if we’ve been wrong all along? What if the one with the most money doesn’t really win? What if the ladder we climb is inverted and every step up is really down?
I left questioning our value system and berating myself for putting code and calls ahead of my kids in their formative years. But, alas, I’ll finish pondering another time. I know the next pull’s triple cherries. Lady luck calls.
