Swedish tech startups and scaleups

I'm baffled that anyone still believes governments provide truly efficient services in any capacity, for anything at all?

The only areas in which it's ostensibly 'more efficient' are where there are natural monopolies and market conditions that make it impossible to do otherwise, and so we accept socialized intervention.

In most cases, we only socialize 'when necessary' - not the other way around.

"There's incredible efficiency in public institutions too, they just optimise for different things. One for money, the other for reach, impact, accountability." - I can hardly believe anyone could think that. That's what they put on paper, generally not what they do.

Both public and private organizations are fighting for their own institutional survival and power - it's just the mechanisms of influence are different: one gets money from taxpayers with some kind of 'oversight' which is not necessarily responsive to needs, the other, lives or dies on whether or not the provide value to people for a given price (aside form private monopolies).

It takes a 'minimum of reflection' to realize this as we have unlimited practical evidence for it ... were this to be even remotely true, then everything would be socialized as a 'matter of scale and efficiency'. We would be inexorably pulled in that direction - and yet - basically few things are, except maybe Healthcare in the US, as one of those markets that 'requires more social intervention' but for which there is currently very little.

Which governments invent the iPhone? (or could ever?). Hint: it's not a technology, it's a product which requires a product/market orientation, the ability to shift nimbly in innumerable areas of specialty, that no government has ever exhibited any capacity for - except - during wartime. When did they develop Web Analytics? Networking equipment? Effective merchandising mix even for things like groceries which is what give us the amazing variety and quality of products and produce we have? Farming equipment, processes, resources? Search Engines? Automobiles? Music streaming service? Chip designs? Video Games? Superhero Films? Toys? Makeup? Clothing? IoT Products? Furniture, lighting, tools? Construction equipment? Giant supply chains for all of those? Distribution chains? Financial services for investment banking? Retail? Commercial?

This list is really long.

I mean, it all could be done by an elected committee, but in most cases, not nearly as well.

In 1920 - yes - I can kind of understand it; 'on paper' of we merely had the government take over all of the auto-manufacturing plants, we could theoretically reduce costs by 10% by clearing out management, and, reducing profit taking! Citizens Unite! ... but it would not have been good for the future.

After a century of experimentation with all of that, we have some good data.

The government of Canada, in 2022 can't get my Health Records online.

They have spent $800 Million (>10x over budget) on an in-house payroll service for their employees that does not work. That's a lot of money, and it's the tip of the iceberg.

Where is the inquiry?

Obviously governments are necessary for enforcing basic regulatory requirements all over the place as it would not be efficient for us to have private practice to do that, but it depends on the situation. (For example, I wonder if 'rating agencies' need either to be socialized or to have extra careful oversight?)

Some public services with natural monopolies (roads, energy transport) obviously must be socialized in some way, because we can't have 10 different competing electricity grids and/or 'toll roads everywhere'. But of course, government generally does not actually 'build roads' - they contract that out to competitive bids, hopefully with oversight. That would be absurd.

Case and Point for the 'Governments are Better' enthusiasts - in which countries are the roads actually built by government employees? And have a better situation overall? I'll bet nowhere, because it makes no sense at all - even in an industry that is 'very large' with ostensibly a lot of room for 'scale' ... private contractors do the actual road construction.

'Pure R&D' is generally impossible in private markets outside of companies that are 'swimming in profits' (aka Google, MSFT) and even then it's not very pure, which is why higher education has to be strongly associated with government.

Basic education, regulatory considerations, strategic investments of scale impossible by private markets alone (aka chip fabs), investments in markets which are political in nature (weapons systems, space systems, some large energy projects), in which there are other, existential considerations/inelastic situations that combine to warp outcomes (aka Healthcare) there have to be interventions.

In most but not all cases, we have socialization because of necessity not because there are advantages, and vast majority of currently private markets would not benefit from being socialized.

Finally ... maybe this is mostly moot - I'll bet (but I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong) that most of the extra taxation in Sweden goes mostly to redistribution type expense, aka paternity leave, retirement, welfare services etc. which are all very expensive, and that Gov. Sweden is probably not directly doing a lot of market oriented things anyhow. I mean, they're not making furniture, coffee, or Music services ...

Counting start-ups isn't trivial. At least if you also want to count something meaningful. Estonia has a lot of finance start-ups due to a friendly regulatory climate for that sort of thing, but do they really count?

Also, for things that aren't purely nebulous (not just thinking of finance here) you can't just go out and start anything anywhere. If you start something in Norway you'd better not rely on cheap local labour, but you might gamble on cheap electricity. Saudi Arabia just has no comparative advantages apart from oil and Hajj tourism.

An actual advantage that I think Sweden has, is the combination of a highly educated and highly creative workforce. Your stereotypical Swedish engineer isn't just educated for economic reasons (because if it was about money, he could have done a dozen easier things anyway). He also has some serious creative ambition. If you are rich enough to pay him and clever enough to steer those ambitions down a profitable path, you can make a ton of money on people like that.

> Counting start-ups isn't trivial. At least if you also want to count something meaningful.

That's why I counted both startups and funding received by those startups.