Taking Risk

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This is it exactly, it's the cost of capital and living that is the problem.

If our countries had control over their own capital and provided utility at cost the economic development would be easy. Instead we're charged monopoly rents for everything from water to electricity, taxed to oblivion and charged horrendous usary on all capital.

Because we've ran out of ARMs...

I think this misses a big mentality difference between the US and most other developed countries.

In the US, people like to exaggerate and boast. Everything is the best, biggest, etc.

In the US, "new is always better". Doesn't matter if the new is just the old with an app (coworking, food delivery, taxi, hotels), or just a worse iteration of an already existing thing (all the crappy companies trying to reinvent worse trains with "pods") it's celebrated for being new and innovative. Reminder that bloody Juicero got millions of dollars of investment.

In the US, there's a big celebrity culture. People genuinely worship celebrities, including successful business people (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk to name two popular examples). There's always the assumption that they were successful because they were smart and hard working (which is of course, at best, half the story).

None of those exist to such an extent in other developed countries. Hell, in France being a billionaire is seen as a negative thing in many social circles. Even entirely self-made billionaires such as Xavier Niel who dropped out of middle/high school to start a business over Minitel (a French precursor to the Internet) that have had a very positive impact on French society (by one, creating a telecom that brought extremely affordable internet and mobile phone plans to the general public, and two, creating a free and brilliant tech school, 42) aren't really seen as "good" or considered a celebrity worthy of respect/veneration.

Also, in many other developed countries people "work to live" instead of "live to work". Getting a stable good paying job that will get you plenty of time off to do things you genuinely enjoy, be they pottery, gardening, travelling, lego, rock climbing or whatever, is considered a good deal for many. Why waste your early years when you have the most energy hustling so that maybe you can make it big? People's ambitions usually revolve around personal things such as bucket lists of travel destinations, family, hobbies, etc., and often but not always, being successful at work, but to the extent of being able to calmly afford all the aforementioned and mostly enjoy/tolerate it, not necessarily becoming billionaire businesspeople.

Financially, the UK is heavily centred around London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, so it's not altogether surprising that university students feel like they need a paying job that keeps a roof over their heads. Worse, the competition for rental property in London is ridiculous, which is the only choice in town for an ex-student.

And London is where the VC people are.

Also, in the USA 'bricks and mortar' businesses have far cheaper shipping costs, and 342 million people, without going international, that DHL or FedEx will ship across the entire US with a cheaper price than we can ship from SE England to NW Scotland. Then again, we both speak English, which is why the UK is always the second target for a US firm once they're up and running, and vice versa.

The UK is 4th in the count of 'unicorns' after USA, China, and India, and has not quite double that of it's closest European neighbour, so we're not doing that badly. It's just a shame everything is skewed towards London in the UK.