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by nightlifelover 5612 days ago
> If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

Completely disagree, social security has rather a negative on the willingness of the population to take risks. In countries with high social securities, such as Switzerland or Germany there are less startups founded on average. People instead are in a kind of security thinking and take the most safe jobs, get an insurance for everything, etc..
3 comments
Norse 5612 days ago
Did you miss the bit of the article where it wsas pointed out that those countries have the highest number of startups in the world? Not "less on average" but "the most".
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Symmetry 5612 days ago
Its possible we shouldn't be too quick to infer too much from this article, however. Norway is a major oil producer and if Norway's startup creation rate is very different from Sweden and Denmark's maybe we should be looking at other factors.
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Norse 5611 days ago
Didn't the article mention that Denmark was number 2 in startups after Norway? So not very different at all. And I suspect Finland is quite up there too.

Along with the fact that Norway saves all its oil in a fund for a rainy day, I don't think oil figures that much.

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hmottestad 5612 days ago
As I recall Germany and Switzerland do not have particularly good social securities. They both differ from Norway (the country in the article) by having very, very, very limited base health insurance. Their system is pretty similar to the US.
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Norse 5611 days ago
Germany and Switzerland have insurance-based UHC systems. More market-oriented, and somewhat more expensive than the other European systems. In fact Switzerlands system is very expensive indeed, running at almost 66% of the USAs costs per head. But the results are on par with the other European systems. Social securities are fairly good.
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hellrich 5612 days ago
Not true for Germany, nearly everything is covered by the Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung.
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loewenskind 5612 days ago
>high social securities, such as Switzerland

Do you actually know anything about these countries? I see a lot more entrepreneurs in Switzerland than I do in the US. That is, I see people with small businesses all over the place. It feels like every 3rd or 4th car on the road is a company car for some small business. Maybe there aren't thousands of useless, never-going-to-go-anywhere web start-ups starting every day, but who cares?

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