In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism

You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a "sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens (in exchange for taxes, etc.).

It sounds like Norwegians have a different idea of where that baseline should be.

> It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the US.

OK, fair enough, but again- remember why it is that you care one way or the other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there a point to accumulating more than that? From the article, and from what other posters on this thread have said, it sure sounds like the "limited" potential income level in Norway is still quite high, by any rational standard, so what does it matter? After five or six million dollars per year, would an increase actually impact your life in a noticeable way?

By the way, I'm speaking from a strictly pragmatic standpoint here, not an idealogical one- some people see this as a moral issue, and that's not where I'm going here. I'm basically saying, "if my income is X millions of dollars, why do I care if the government takes half of that and I only have .5X?" Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more? And if you do, will it make you happy?

Of course, I should point out that this is all very easy for me to say, seeing as I never have and probably never will earn enough to face this question personally. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were rich, who knows.

"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government services are among the highest in the world." >Of course, the country has some of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in Nepal.

"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my bones." > Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.

"This is a place where entire cities smell of drying fish—an odor not unlike the smell of rotting fish" > What?

"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar bears." There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on arctic island owned by Norway.

"The food isn't great." > The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.

"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey" > Define happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates.

"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home." > Alligators, heat-waves, and death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to make a home.

"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of the lowest in the world." > Thanks to how Norway actually measures unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.

"There are no private schools in Norway" > Incorrect, there are many private kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in Norway.

"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead researcher for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway." > I included this statement because it's TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview an expert.

"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk, regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good schools." > Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its schools are mediocre at best.

So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry-pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y, it also may have a downside Z".

As for "they'd pay more voluntarily", I just don't believe they'd go to all the trouble to dismantle our one crude solution to the free rider problem if none of them intend to become free riders. Usually when anyone says it's not about the money, it's about the money.

And there are many degrees of socialism.

In Norway there is socialism (to some extent) and start-ups.