Think I wrote/deleted the comment you were repsonding to. Let me re-summarize just for the conversation. Not all of this was in the original, nor what ended up in the edit.
Risk/Return is two-factor analysis. You might get lots of $ return from risking lots of money. You may get modest $ return risking everything you have. Who has the higher risk return? Well, on a proportional basis you need to know both factors.
> US has lots of $$$ big returns. But there is very effective capital markets and legal infrastructure. A venture c-corp is not risking the entrerenuer's personal capital (per-se), in the same way as a self-funded business. The purpose of this setup is to take "more" risk with more money. The less risk there is structurally, then, the more risk is taken. Seeing lots of risk being taken is thus consistent with less actual risk being taken. When there is more proportional than risk, you invest more. But sometimes those returns are not there without threshold-scale capital. You want to see massive risk? Invest in sub-saharan africa. Or in Afghanistan. Etc. Those are counter examples, and people who take lots of risk "with no safety net."
Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is.
On the flip-side, there are massive returns to minimal capital that happen all of the time. And massive innovation as well. Again, taking lots of risk, because they have little (but all) to lose. In this case, downside protection really does help people to take risk. The classic example is Harry Potter. Athough entire other areas (sports, fashion, music, art) are born "on the streets" everyday. Many of these folks (the most talented) benefit from a safety net (JK Rowling, for example). The willingness to take risk is there, its just not in VC backed data-points (for obvious, but also structral reasons--see above--its too risky). But these examples are in industries that are not capital intensive (human or physical) for a variety of reasons. Thus, the don't look like SV. [Edit: also, while for society the benefits may be massive/large scale, it is also the case that not all the returns to to the creators or the takers of risk. this is espcially true in the latter examples where people have minimal capital but all to lose.]
Anyway, just some food for thought. or thoughts for food. =D