[tajen]

What do you think about France? It looks like a good, first approximation of your proposal, many people defend worker-owned businesses here, "service public citoyen" (public benefit corporations), it's difficult to amass wealth (the only rich are from inheritance) and would unionize the hell against powerful corporations if Apple were born here. Drawback: We don't have Apple, we have DailyMotion and people don't aim to become huge enough to compete against Silicon Valley startups.

I don't like being entrepreneur in this context personally, but the startup ecosystem is thriving in Paris and Lyon and I sure hope the current generation is about to issue some major players. I personally fail to see how they can be profitable with our tax levels, social obligations and regulations, but it may happen.

List of hot startups in France: http://www.eu-startups.com/2017/02/10-french-startups-to-loo...

[elihu]

I don't know enough about France to have an opinion one way or another (I visited once for a few days back in 2000), but what you say sounds mostly good.

From a startup perspective, I think complex regulations are a bigger impediment than taxes; any company that starts as a couple people in a garage shouldn't have to be experts in corporate law in addition to whatever problem they're trying to solve.

I expect in order to have a successful environment for startups to happen, you need network effects of smart people congregating in one place and be a place where creative people would want to live. Having good universities really helps. It seems like France should be able to supply those things, but as I said, I don't have specific recent knowledge about what France is like these days.

[tajen]

Since you seem to be the right audience, I'll advertise it to you ;) ...especially since I'm rather a candidate to leave this country!

> You need network effects of smart people

We definitely have this, especially in the heart of Paris, and in other cities too. I've lived in Madrid and Sydney, therefore I dare giving my opinion, with the limitation that I'm not a serial entrepreneur in each of those cities.

> where creative people would want to live

Well, it's Paris, land of Macron, of Montmartre, and social mixity with black/white/arabs/traders/social-workers/low-income living together, etc. A lot of people live this mixity, fertile for ideas and leverage. The glamour is however balanced by high rental costs (=most often living far in the suburbs) and medium pays (60k€ per year is high for us, but health, unemployment, youth education and retirement are included).

> Good universities

We have plenty of excellent engineering and management schools (Centrale, X, INSA, EM Lyon, INSEAD, Les Mines, HEC), half of them free and nonetheless excellent (In France free doesn't mean students are bad, rather the opposite). We're not well versed in international rankings, so Australian unis may rank above us, but I'm persuaded it's more about tweaking the rankings than student IQ.

Given the impression you give, maybe have a business trip in Paris and interview people in coworking spaces to have alternative opinions? You may love France!