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Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

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Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#101

Post by ramtatatam »

jdm2212 wrote: post #73
ramtatatam wrote: post #67

Nations developed different set of laws. Nations with simpler laws make it simpler to take risk. To run business means take risk, but you will never win if you have state as your enemy. I say this from experience, was living in both over bureaucratised country with such complex regulations that even bureaucrats could not follow. In such country your business relies on mood/honesty of public servant who handles you. I…

The paper argues the opposite explicitly. From the abstract: "Rather, the evidence shows that the strongest predictors of cross-national variation in entrepreneurial activity were normative, with social norms being the most strongly associated with entrepreneurialism and rates of organizational founding."

Well, great :) my experience shows something else :)

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#102

Post by whatshisface »

dctoedt wrote: post #82
ch4s3 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t mandatory service violate the Non-Agression Principle[1]? It is after all coercive by definition. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

The Non-Aggression Principle has its limits, mainly that we humans are by nature self-centered and tend to short-term, me-focused thinking; we therefore sometimes need to be compelled to do things we don't want to do, sometimes for our own good and sometimes for the good of the society that provides us with the opportunities to do what we do want to do. By analogy, parents know better than young kids what's best for…

I wouldn't call the analogy between states and parents insane, but I also wouldn't call it libertarian. In fact it may be the exact opposite of libertarian.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#103

Post by Bayart »

throw0101a wrote: post #95

Someone once observed / joked that it may be a result of natural selection: A lot of the people that left the proverbial Old World for (e.g.) the US were often the most hopeful, so that's why the US is (stereotypically) optimistic. The people that stayed behind were the ones that were more dour and/or laid back.

Those who left were the most at risk of persecution, starvation or disenfranchisement (due to the shrinking amount of wealth to be inherited, similar to how half-nobodies congregated around Norman adventurers to invade England or Italy).

The religious upheavals following the Reformation and the insane demographic growth following in the wake of industrialization drove the settlement of overseas colonies, not ethereal qualities like optimism and entrepreneurship.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#104

Post by magduf »

rayiner wrote: post #58
bsanr2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any failed nations without a relatively recent (<100 years) history of economic or political exploitation by a contemporary superpower?

A more helpful way to look at it is how countries like South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan grew so rapidly in the 20th century despite active intervention by superpowers. South Korea in 1960 was poorer than Congo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, etc. About the same as Bangladesh. Today South Korea is as rich as France.

Also Germany. At the end of WWII, Germany was bombed out, whole cities were flattened. 20 years later (according to my mom who lived there in the early 60s), you couldn't even tell a massive war had ever taken place there. Some of that was the Marshall Plan providing funding, but the rest was a society that actually pulled together and got stuff done instead of being mired in corruption or infighting. Japan was largely the same way. Meanwhile, 80 years later, America can't even keep its bridges from falling down.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#105

Post by jririi82zxn »

protonfish wrote: post #57
ido wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Anecdotally I'm an Israeli who moved to Europe (first Austria then Germany) and at least from my layman's perspective both of these countries seem both a lot less entrepreneurial than Israel and a lot less corrupt... So I wonder if something unusual is going on or if one or more of my perceptions are wrong.

I think there is a difference between "informal" corruption (where some officials need to be bribed) and the "institutionalized" corruption of a monolithic and completely unnecessary bureaucracy. At least in the first instance, there is a path to get things done. European bureaucracy is a tar pit where innovative business goes to die.

Yet they often have a higher quality of life, universal access to social services, and afford the general public longer periods of economic stability relative to the shitshow the US descends into every 4-8 yrs.

Perhaps innovative business (which I translate to “how to enrich myself via an ephemeral finance system without adding much new utility” these days”) isn’t a great target for governments to enable.

Social pressure downward to abide the desires of a minority of elites before the public used to be called authoritarianism, and it used to be reviled. Just because it lacks the overt violence of yesterday doesn’t mean it isn’t manipulative and damaging to society.

Profits are up. So is inequality.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#106

Post by prepend »

mocha_nate wrote: post #55
prepend wrote: post #5

I think it has something with redemption and new identities. I think societies that allow reboots lead to greater risk taking. Also capital and risk distribution. I visited Amsterdam and was interested in their history and how it took off after the invention of the corporation. Corporations can end and the knowledge from them can go into a new venture (redemption). They can also raise capital through distributed owne…

I agree 100%. Also, fun fact: the Netherlands had the first stock corporation ever: “east India trading company”

That’s a fascinating story. That’s how I learned of it because the wallpaper in my hotel bathroom was in English and French and Dutch and had these factoids about Netherlands. One was the stock corporation thing and the stock exchange.

Sadly the east India trading company resulted in untold millions of death for people on the wrong end. But it made a lot of money.

Another bit I learned was how the Dutch stopped Napoleon by flooding their country.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#107

Post by sharadov »

Most important reasons -

1. Do you tolerate failure? Is it treated as a learning step or are you marked for life ( huge stigma in some societies,IMO America does this better than anyone else.).

2. Individual vs Group Think ( lots of societies don't tolerate people who think differently, frequently ostracized or outcast).

3. Capital

4. IP protection

5. Immigration Policy - Do you allow immigrants in? Immigrants are hungry, they come with nothing, expect nothing and have huge appetite for risk.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#108

Post by jdm2212 »

cambalache wrote: post #99
jdm2212 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the conventionally accepted explanation for this is Acemoglu's, and it's that GDP is an Nth-order effect of climate. Warm weather -> highly productive agriculture -> landholders become extremely wealthy -> oligarchic government -> low GDP. Think of the American North and South before the Civil War, where slavery and inequality took hold in the highly agriculturally productive South but never in the North. T…

Is Alaska a big outlier inside the US regarding equality? Because the US as a whole is nowhere near the level of Norway in terms of equality. As a matter of fact Russia has a lower Gini coefficient. Even in the Americas US is below Canada, Uruguay, Argentina among other and almost parity with Venezuela. The problem in Venezuela is that the state has been weak and ineffective. Weak != Small, you have this suffocating…

Oil today, or fertile agricultural land 150 years ago, doesn't make government big or small. It just frees whoever controls the natural resource from accountability to others and lets them do whatever they want to do. Putin wants to run a superpower, so he pours the oil money into a bigger defense budget than Russia's GDP justifies. Maduro is (notionally) a socialist and pours the oil money into a bloated bureaucracy.

Re: Why Are Some Societies More Entrepreneurial than Others?

#109

Post by mullen »

eternalban wrote: post #51
ido wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Anecdotally I'm an Israeli who moved to Europe (first Austria then Germany) and at least from my layman's perspective both of these countries seem both a lot less entrepreneurial than Israel and a lot less corrupt... So I wonder if something unusual is going on or if one or more of my perceptions are wrong.

Typically, in a corrupt country, the 'take' of corrupt institutions and actors critically diminishes available (finite) Capital and distorts the distribution of what remains. What is unusual is that Israel is the recipient of largess of the American tax payers and enjoys continual replenishment of available Capital. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Israel's GDP is $380B, so $3B-$4B is just a drop in the bucket. As other posters mentioned, that $3B-$4B is earmarked for Defense purchases which means they have to spend that money in the US.
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