[bjelkeman-again]

Despite that "everything is expensive", "taxes are high" and "whether is cold" it is actually a very good place to live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_Index

Cultural life in Stockholm is rather quite good for a town of its size, and you have plenty of nature around you to compensate for not having quite as many bars as London.

Racism is sadly on the rise, but not as bad as in many other societies. Anecdotally I have immigrant friends and visitor friends, from backgrounds that would invite racism, who say that they feel less discriminated in Sweden than in other Euopean countries. No place is perfect though, you just have to select the drawbacks you want to put up with.

More importantly for Hacker News readers I consider that the startup and investment community to be fairly insular and limited in scope in Stockholm compared to other places I have worked, particular London, West/East coast US. But no surprises there, it is a lot smaller after all.

Indeed: I am a Swede.

[forza]

That's quite an old ranking and it's hard to compare against any other ranking, but I can't imagine Ireland still being at the top of the list.

I do think the "IT-community" (and most people) are awesome. While somewhat underappreciated it's lot more enthusiast/hacker than academic/corporate, compared to other countries. People also generally don't care about hierarchies and titles in the workplaces. I mean getting to work is often more "troublesome" than getting things done at work. YMMV of course.

[bjelkeman-again]

Well, Ireland having economic troubls hasn't affected Sweden much. The GDP is up: http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_...

[h84ru3a]

"investment community... limited in scope"

But how about the regulatory environment?

Maybe it might make a good base from which to launch a startup focused on reclaiming some standard expectations privacy for internet users, by using original internet peer-to-peer design instead of the prevalent "calf-cow" (client-server) model. Many, like the 60-something Harvard blogger who recently wrote about Facebook's flaws, are calling for an end to this design.

Consider the Skype example mentioned as one of Sweden's startup success stories. (And I believe he did eventually go to London for better access to capital.)

[bjelkeman-again]

What do you need to know about the regulatory environment to satisfy this?

[h84ru3a]

I am afraid I do not understand the question as you have structured it.

If you can rephrase it, maybe I can give you an answer.

I may have been sloppy in my usage of the term "regulatory environment". Is that want you mean?