In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism

http://m.inc.com/run_biz/16850/

126 162 15 years ago

m.inc.com

awt2• 15 years ago

Wheras in enlightened california, we only pa a measly 40% of our income in taxes.

beoba7• 15 years ago

The first thing I learned is that Norwegians don't think about taxes the way we do. Whereas most Americans see taxes as a burden, Norwegian entrepreneurs tend to see them as a purchase, an exchange of cash for services. "I look at it as a lifelong investment," says Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm[...].

michael_dorfman9• 15 years ago

Exactly. I've been living in Norway for over a decade, and I've never heard anyone complain about their taxes, or paying $9/gallon for gas.

dantheman5• 15 years ago

If that was what they truly thought then there would be no reason to use force to collect taxes, they could just have a recommended donation and collect that. For some reason, I don't think that would work.

This form of mental gymnastics, is very comparable to Nietzsche's analysis of the slave morality - where one alters their values in reaction oppression, so that it becomes moral, or even desirable, to act in a subservient way.

beoba7• 15 years ago

I thought this line was particularly telling: "Although America remains near the top of the world in terms of entrepreneurial aspirations - that is, the percentage of people who want to start new things-in terms of actual start-up activity, our country has fallen behind not just Norway but also Canada, Denmark and Switzerland."

Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM

Reading this also reminded me of an interview I'd heard a few months ago: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm...

QUIGGIN: After I wrote the book, I saw the movie "Zombieland," and rule number two is double tap. You always have to hit them twice. I talk about the trickle down theory, that when you help the rich that helps everybody. I think a theory so convenient to powerful people is never going to be cured permanently.

RYSSDAL: And the theory about trickle-down economics is in some way coming back to the United States in this debate we're having about the Bush era tax cuts.

QUIGGIN: Absolutely. It's suggesting that keeping on giving tax cuts to the top 1 or 5 percent of the population is going to help everybody else. The evidence is very clear that that's not the case. That the vast majority of benefits of economic growth have gone to people in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. Within that 10 percent, the top 1 percent has done much better than the remaining 9 percent, and within that 1 percent, the top tenth of a percent has done even better.

Moral of the story?: We've been had.

true_religion• 15 years ago

> Yet any mention of figuring out what they're doing right (and what we're doing wrong) is SOCIALISM

I don't understand this. Just because some Americans consider "socialism" to be a poor fit for their country, doesn't mean we shouldn't accept it when other countries self-describe their actions as "socialism". To do so, would be to adapt language to pander to the American world view (e.g. we think something is good, so avoid calling it socialism so Americans may adopt it without bias) rather than retain concise accuracy in discussion.

_corbett3• 15 years ago

Switzerland is by no means socialist and is rather an example of many libertarian ideals. Taxes are done by canton (city/state) and in some one can pay as little as no income tax. Health care is required, decoupled from employment and well regulated, but private. I've lived in all of the aforementioned countries and prefer the socialist model, but Switzerland is another example of there being many ways to reach the same ideal. I only hope the US can make it there too one day so that I could feel comfortable living in it.

laut3• 15 years ago

Please stop pointing to successful market economies and calling them socialist.

In some ways Switzerland is a libertarian tax haven and really makes the US look socialist.

Switzerland, Canada and Denmark are more economically free than the US according to this: http://www.heritage.org/index/

Just because there are some very rich people in the US, it doesn't mean the average person would be better off in a socialist country such North Korea or Cuba.

Norse14• 15 years ago

It is possible for countries to be both more socialist and capitalist than the USA.

If there is a lesson to be had from Scandianvia it is that cpaitalist is a way of earning money, and socialist is a way of spending it.

Both dials can be turned up at the same time.

svlla• 15 years ago

In USA, start-ups say yes to DoD money...

zdw• 15 years ago

If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

Thus having the government take care of basic welfare and health care benefits frees people to be entrepreneurial, in a sense.

Compare to the US, where people are tied to a job based on the benefits they have through that job, and before the health care legislation's removal of preexisting conditions clauses, if you had a medical condition and lost your job, you could very easily end up in financial distress.

Personally, I would have transitioned to being independent a full year earlier if it wasn't for health care coverage issues.

bobo99• 15 years ago

But if you have less to win, why should you take risks anyway?

michael_dorfman9• 15 years ago

Speaking as one who has started several start-ups in Norway, I'd say: there is still quite a bit to win, there is much less risk, and at the end of the day, we're not really in it for the money, are we?

xilun0• 15 years ago

Less to win, maybe, but still you can read from the article: "He bought a Porsche". And I doubt everybody wanted to have one in Norway can do so (and even if it is the case, it would be even greater :P )

No human being needs 1 billion dollar to live correctly, and even in indecent luxury. Some people also value well begin of other and not only their own. (It might still be partly egoistic in a sens that this makes them feels better and it's probably very cool to live in an environment where people are happier, but i don't thing that invalidate the whole idea...)

thomasfl• 15 years ago

If just being wealthy is not enough, then you probably want to live somewhere to become super rich.

I would still prefer to live here in Norway.

beoba7• 15 years ago

Same carrot, with less stick.

xxpor2• 15 years ago

I suppose we should have a flat tax also?

Norse14• 15 years ago

Because the risks are reduced far more than the rewards.

johnohara• 15 years ago

I don't know what constitutes "basic welfare" in Norway, but were the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to reimburse the health care premiums of anyone starting a new business, up to 100 weeks, I believe you would see a marked increase in the creation of new businesses in this country.

If anything, it would grease the rails to becoming "ramen profitable."

borism2• 15 years ago

wow, what an irresponsible proposal. corporations already have free speech, now they need to get government paid healthcare also? why should US taxpayers reimburse those entrepreneur's health care costs if most of them will fail to produce any jobs at all? looks like a great way to create even more moral hazard in US companies.

health care of work force should be shared between employers and society as a whole, not offloaded back and forth from one to the other.

derleth• 15 years ago

> but were the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to reimburse the health care premiums of anyone starting a new business, up to 100 weeks, I believe you would see a marked increase in the creation of new businesses in this country.

You'd have to word the bill very stringently to ensure that the new businesses weren't just new parts of an existing business shuffling employees around to take advantage of all the money now sitting on the table.

For example, $BIGCO all of a sudden becomes the angel investor for a half-dozen startups full of ex-$BIGCO employees who are somehow still working on pre-existing $BIGCO products and understand that $BIGCO will ensure their paychecks as long as they do the kind of work they did while they were still at $BIGCO. The only difference is that the government is paying for the healthcare of those (ex-)$BIGCO employees, allowing the $BIGCO CEO to make 300% more this quarter.

beoba7• 15 years ago

Perhaps this is why startups are always filled with 20-somethings. Imagine how much would be done if those who happened to have families could also easily make the leap.

uuilly4• 15 years ago

I paid $60 a month for catastrophic healthcare from State Farm when I ran a ramen profitable startup. My deductible was $1500. When I nearly cut my toe off walking on a beach, I had surgery, $1000 worth of antibiotics and two follow up visits. I paid a grand total of $1500 for everything. I know I'm a healthy young man, but that seemed like a pretty fair deal to me.

Amazingly this plan will soon become illegal for being too minimalist under the new healthcare laws. I get that there are real problems with healthcare in the US. But entrepreneurs are mostly healthy young men, and it doesn't cost much to insure healthy young men.

_delirium• 15 years ago

> But entrepreneurs are mostly healthy young men

Could this be at least in part a self-fulfilling prophecy? Due to the way healthcare is set up in the U.S., the only people who really can consider quitting their jobs, and losing their group-health plan as a result, are: 1) people who are already rich (or have rich family); and 2) healthy young men.

edit: Actually, I suppose people over 65 also can, due to the U.S.'s strange age-based national health system. But people over 65 tend not to be likely startup candidates for other reasons.

smokey_the_bear• 15 years ago

I know your point was specifically about young men, but this is one of the things that keeps women from doing startups. I'm young, healthy, female, and doing a startup, but one of my major concerns was finding a health care plan that would eventually cover maternity. Prior to the health reform law, if I'd developed any kind of condition I wouldn't have been able to switch plans, and even if I did, they often don't cover maternity for the first year.

I could afford to pay the costs of a normal birth, but my nephew's cost $300,000.

jberryman2• 15 years ago

But entrepreneurs are mostly healthy young men, and it doesn't cost much to insure healthy young men

You're begging the question. Perhaps healthy young bachelors are the ones quitting their jobs to make the next social-coupon-micro-dating websites because they are the only ones who aren't constrained by the factors we're discussing.

rshigeta• 15 years ago

That's debate in the US - everyone just says 'what is good for me'. The point of the article is that in Norway, the evaluation of 'what is good for us' works for them suprisingly well and doesn't stop people from starting businesses.

davidwparker• 15 years ago

I agree, it would be nice if the government could help alleviate things such as basic welfare and health care benefits. Unfortunately for the USA, we are in such a massive amount of debt that it would be impossible* for the government to do such a thing. And between health care and the military spending, we're pretty much diving deeper and deeper.

* We could do it, but I doubt that any legislators would go for such a thing.

tankenmate2• 15 years ago

I think you would find that if the Govt. took over healthcare in the US it would probably save the country as a whole money. The US pays more for healthcare per capita than any other OECD nation, and still doesn't manage to cover all its citizens. A minor increase in the corporate tax rate would mean that the state could cover the cost of health cover and then companies wouldn't need to pay stupid money to cover their employees. An all round win-win.

loewenskind4• 15 years ago

The US spends over 700 billion dollars a year on the military. It wouldn't take that much to fully cover everyone.

nightlifelover• 15 years ago

> If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

Completely disagree, social security has rather a negative on the willingness of the population to take risks. In countries with high social securities, such as Switzerland or Germany there are less startups founded on average. People instead are in a kind of security thinking and take the most safe jobs, get an insurance for everything, etc..

Norse14• 15 years ago

Did you miss the bit of the article where it wsas pointed out that those countries have the highest number of startups in the world? Not "less on average" but "the most".

hmottestad3• 15 years ago

As I recall Germany and Switzerland do not have particularly good social securities. They both differ from Norway (the country in the article) by having very, very, very limited base health insurance. Their system is pretty similar to the US.

loewenskind4• 15 years ago

>high social securities, such as Switzerland

Do you actually know anything about these countries? I see a lot more entrepreneurs in Switzerland than I do in the US. That is, I see people with small businesses all over the place. It feels like every 3rd or 4th car on the road is a company car for some small business. Maybe there aren't thousands of useless, never-going-to-go-anywhere web start-ups starting every day, but who cares?

ThomPete3• 15 years ago

This isn't true if you look to the Scandinavian countries.

Because you have less to loose you don't aspire as much thus you don't take risk.

Furthermore it's much more expensive to fail in Scandinavia for those who venture into actually risking.

blahedo• 15 years ago

> thus you don't take risk.

And yet, "Rates of start-up creation [in Norway] are among the highest in the developed world, and Norway has more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States." Did you read the article?

> it's much more expensive to fail in Scandinavia for those who venture into actually risking.

How so?

Norse14• 15 years ago

Yet the rates of startups are higher in Norway.

And "it is more expensive o fail"? With no risk of medical bankrupcy, guaranteed health care, free university for the kids, a generous safety net, pensions etc...how can it possibly be more disastrous?

lawfulfalafel• 15 years ago

This was posted 9 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2124799

I do congratulate you on linking to the mobile site to bypass the url conflict, that is pretty smart.

michael_dorfman9• 15 years ago

That was inadvertent, not clever. The person who sent me the link did it via mobile phone, so he used the mobile link, and I didn't see it when it was posted previously.

limmeau• 15 years ago

I enjoyed the lean layout and thought you had chosen the mobile version for that purpose.

cromulent2• 15 years ago

Norway is not a socialist country.

Social democracy != socialism.

tallanvor4• 15 years ago

It's all in how you define a term, but traditionally Norway is a very socialist country - The major businesses were owned by the state, and while that has changed, the government does still hold large stakes in telecom, oil, and transportation companies. Private businesses also generally have a much flatter hierarchy than you find in the US, and income distribution is much more equally. And, of course, the member parties of the ruling coalition consider themselves to be socialist parties.

cromulent2• 15 years ago

Of course you can slice the definitions in different ways, but the common definition is that the capitalist ideal of all means of production being in private hands and socialism is the opposite of that - they are all in public hands. Norway is a mixed economy. I think that the USA and Norway are not at the poles of that continuum but much more close together, especially given the Fed's recent acquisitions.

brc5• 15 years ago

You're free to leave Norway whenever you like. You can own private property in Norway, and grow your business and keep at least half the profits. Socialist countries have state ownership, no private property, restrictions on freedoms.

Norway is a social democracy. At any point the government could be voted out and replaced with one that changes all the laws. It's not a socialist country.

ThomPete3• 15 years ago

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.

So do Denmark (where I am from) and Sweden.

Yes the taxes are higher (up to 60% in Denmark with a progressive tax system) and about the same I believe in Norway.

But it's not like everyone walks around an love it. In fact there is great opposition to the level that taxation have gone to. In Denmark it's an election year and several social welfare benefits plus income tax is being discussed as the main theme.

But all this doesn't really matter cause the US have something that neither of the Scandinavian countries nor any other European nations have.

They have a big ass market and one language.

Europe is a huge market (around +400 Million no?) but most countries (unlike Scandinavia) don't do well with english so there is no unifying factors that allow for the kind of scalable business that can be created in the US (at least not as easily)

There are many problems with the kind of social welfare models and lack of aspiration is actually one of them. People don't try as hard and because they pay high taxes they come to expect A LOT from the government.

I have lived in the US for enough years to know that there are many things that the US should envy from the Scandinavian countries. But the start-up environment is not one of them.

_corbett3• 15 years ago

I concur–the US has a big market and a big advantage culturally in terms of startups.

Switzerland has the opposite problem, people are very ambitious, expect to earn a lot of money, and so are unwilling to take the pay cut to go to startups. I have run into many who think creating a successful startup involves having an idea and throwing money at outsourcers to program it. There's so much money thrown around that the idea of a MVP is out the window, a few companies I know have runways of 6+ years....

It's also partly about catching the bug and reaching the critical mass. If you have many friends making amazing things it's hard not to be inspired to try to join in. I don't think the cultural problem is by any means inherent in socialism, but those are just my 50 kroner...

marvin2• 15 years ago

Thanks for setting the record straight on this. I'm Norwegian, and this is exactly what I would say about this. There are many things we do in Scandinavia that should be copied in the US, but start-up culture and small business is not helped along by the tax system and social services/benefits. In fact, the progressive taxation alone incentivizes everyone to _not_ earn more than about 100000 USD a year (if you work harder to earn more, taxation is about 45% on the marginal income).

There are "official" (state-sponsored) investment companies, but they are incredibly risk-averse and never invest in anything halfway radical. Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent.

michael_dorfman9• 15 years ago

Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent.

Really? I've never had problem with this. Nor have I felt the tax system has disincentivized my income (which is well into the top bracket.)

rue• 15 years ago

> In fact, the progressive taxation alone incentivizes everyone to _not_ earn more than about 100000 USD a year […]

100k is a lot. Only people who've seriously lost perspective (or living in areas that have collectively lost perspective and have huge local inflation) think it's not enough. I'm quite happy to pay taxes to support social services. The only thing better would be to equalise incomes so that it wouldn't be necessary…

Symmetry2• 15 years ago

By most measures Denmark, far from being socialist, actually has a freer economy than the US.

loewenskind4• 15 years ago

>Norway don't say yes to socialism they say yes to social welfare in a different way than in the US.

But they do say yes to what most people in the US would call "socialism". When it comes to politics the words the US uses don't match what the rest of the world uses.

relic173• 15 years ago

The article implies that most people in Norway believe that individual rights are less important than the average welfare of all individuals taken together and that personal lives are less important than the well-being of the collective. This is quite logical, because it is the acceptance of this view of the world that makes their system possible.

A similar view is at the root of most governments around the world today and it certainly underpinned the socialist/communist block in the 20th century, though to a different degree. The United States has been a notable exception.

But let's focus on Norway and the idea that it can serve as a model. To take a small example, who believes that a skilled doctor is genuinely happy to have half of his income taken away by law and given to the janitor of his hospital, so that the latter receives the roughly same pay? Well, the surveys say that the level of happiness in Norway are very high, so the doctor must be happy. Happiness measures aside, does that make sense? Is the doctor genuinely happy or has he been told by generations of intellectuals what he should feel happy about and what he should feel guilty about? This is a question that everyone who nominates Norway as a model for the US should answer logically.

GoogleMeElmo3• 15 years ago

A bit of anecdotal evidence from a Norwegian citizen to counter your "doctor vs janitor" argument: I'm more than well aquainted with a doctor and she is more than happy to pay her taxes, in order to benefit the rest of society.

You should also know that even though the tax system in Norway works to even the footing of different posed people financially, it does not wipe out the class difference between a janitor and a doctor. Their net income will still differ by quite a bit (up to 400% at least).

The benefit here is that someone who is considered poor, and would perhaps be forced to live in the street, and only serve to increase the crime rate, will instead recieve help. And the doctor can sleep peacefully at night knowing that the police is out protecting. The hospital emergency staff is ready to recieve the next cardiac arrest patient, the road will be cleared from that heavy snow fall during the night, the list goes on.

In my view the philosophy of the Norwegian tax models is less worries == more happiness, and that is exactly what this model offers for everyone included.

On the other hand its very easy to paint a rosy picture of Norway in a case like this. Mostly becasue US is so easy to outcompete on many of the issues directly involved. Crime rates, mortality rates, helthcare and so on. Norway does of course, like any country, suffer from several political problems. Spending, immigration and government control is perhaps the most fleeting issues right now. But they diminish substantially compared to the issues the US has to face the next decade. And perhaps even worse is it, that the political environment in the US seems allmost hopeless. With the country polarized into two extremes. In Norway the debate is still very much alive around all of these issues. In the US you can quickly get yourself into a place you dont want to be by just shifting your perspective slightly.

Ok now i gotta stop. Let the bashing commence. :P

relic173• 15 years ago

Fundamentally, it comes down to the questions "Do you have the right to keep the fruit of your effort? And do you have the right to dispose of it as you see fit?"

It appears that your acquaintance agrees with having her government take away part of her income and give it to the janitor. She accepts the janitor's claim to part of her property as the janitor's right - i.e. the janitor does not owe her any gratitude, and her act is not a voluntary act of benevolence - she is simply giving him what is already his due.

So where does this right come from? The janitor's need. The question here is whether need can give rise to a legitimate right.

You say that your acquaintance thinks that her giving away part of her wealth helps prevent poorer people from becoming criminals. And that this danger gives them the right to claim part of her wealth. But if you extrapolate this thinking further, you'd get people keeping others hostage by means of a threat - i.e. if you refuse to share with me what you earned but I didn't, I'll turn into a criminal and hurt you. This way of thinking about rights is very dangerous.

My view of happiness is simply the achievement of your values, which you have defined consciously and rationally and which do not infringe on the rights of others. The questions for your acquaintance are "Is she feeling happy because she can buy a protection from criminals", or "Is she feeling happy because she truly loves all her fellow citizens (known and unknown, good and bad, lazy and hard-working)?". Regardless of the answer, the more important question is: "Why does she prefer a situation where she is given no choice, no right to refuse to give away, to a situation where she could give away voluntarily, as an act of kindness?"

jarek4• 15 years ago

You're getting into interesting ground here with questioning happiness. How is happiness defined? Can you truly distinguish between someone who is happy on their own and someone who is happy because their society tells them they should be? Does any happiness not stem from generations of people shaping perceptions of what individuals in their society should feel happy about?

jarek4• 15 years ago

I'm a bit disappointed not to receive a reply to this.

Norse14• 15 years ago

Doctors are an extremly well-educated, mobile workforce. Few chose to leave the country, there are more coming in.

There is more happiness in being well-off in a rich country, than being rich in a poor or troubled one.

Especially if you have a family.

People don't measure themselves against the superrich of other countries anyway. A doctor in Norway has a high-status job and among the best wages in the country. Changing from being in the top in a rich country to being somewhat further from the top in a more trobled one is not a winning proposition. Even if it does mean more number in the bank.

Also, it is undeniable that there are more freedom under the Norwegian system than the US one. Health care, vacation time, education, personal development....I cannot imagine what freedoms the US could measure up in.

_corbett3• 15 years ago

This article rings true to me. I've lived and worked in Norway for a successful startup (FAST Search, later bought by Microsoft) above the Arctic circle. It's a lovely country, the startup did feel like a family (in fact, many brought their kids to work), we worked and played hard, etc. I paid 50% tax and $15 for beers and was more than happy to do so as well–the taxes were well used and having an entire population, rather than a small circle of friends with a high standard of living was so much more fun.

WalterBright• 15 years ago

The real problem is the high cost of health care. This article argues persuasively that it's government interference in the sector that has caused the enormous costs:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-amer...

roschdal• 15 years ago

Norway is successful because of the oil and gas resources here. This makes the economy boom, and is why the welfare state and social democracy works so well. I still think the US has a far more competitive start-up environment. I'm from Norway, by the way.

Norse14• 15 years ago

Norway saves the oil income in an oil fund. The rest of Scandinavia gets the same results with no oil.

tsotha• 15 years ago

Norway would have a lot more trouble saying "ja" to socialism if it didn't have so much oil. That's what makes the whole thing seem like such a good deal - you're getting more than you're paying in.

anghyflawn• 15 years ago

Aw come on, Norway has oil and it is small, but was social-democratic long before any oil, and both Denmark and Sweden have built successful welfare safety nets without relying so much on a natural-resources windfall.

laut3• 15 years ago

Sweden is a big industrial nation. The relatively free market system allowed them to flourish.

In all of the Scandinavian countries the welfare state really didn't start until around the 1960s-1970s.

The government programs have only been possible because of the successful private economy to pay for it, just like in the US.

Although Denmark doesn't have the massive oil wealth that Norway does, there is still some and enough that Denmark is a net oil exporter. And the Danish state gets billions of kroner from oil each year.

Norse14• 15 years ago

Norway saves all it oil in a sovereign wealth fund. The only difference "no oil" would make would be a less stuffed bank account.

Much like the case is with Sweden, Denmark, Finland...who run the same system without oil, and gets similar results.

mindcrime• 15 years ago

Bloody good on Norway. Now if you want Norwegian taxes or the Norwegian government, move to Norway. I'll take the American moral view on taxation, and fight taxation tooth-and-nail until I die, regardless of the pragmatics of it. It's about choice, and freedom, not the actual dollars and cents.

Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.

gaius• 15 years ago

Norwegian examples simply aren't applicable to the rest of the world. Here in the UK we are often compared to Norway, since we are both North Sea oil countries. Well, Norway makes 20x the oil revenue per head of the population than we do. That covers up a an awful lot. We don't have the luxury of economic inefficiencies that Norway can get away with.

guelo• 15 years ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

prodigal_erik2• 15 years ago

For many generations the American moral view, like most everyone else's, has included taxpayer-funded programs that promote the general welfare. The only debates are about how much and which ones. Anarchists and libertarians have found negligible traction with the voters. If they want Somalia, they know where to find it.

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.

gyardley• 15 years ago

Of course Norway's way of doing things could work in the United States - if the typical American had the underlying culture, beliefs, and attitudes of the typical Norwegian.

Since they don't, and cultural change is the sort of thing that happens incrementally over a generation or more, there's no plan of action to be gained from such articles - they're valuable because they teach us a bit about other cultures, but trying to use them to make political points is silly.

loewenskind4• 15 years ago

How do you think these generational changes occur to begin with? Education.

laut3• 15 years ago

The title is an oxymoron. With socialism, you don't have private ownership of the means of production. Thus you cannot have start-ups with socialism.

michaelchisari2• 15 years ago

The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of production and distribution". Some interpret this to be state or public ownership, but others see worker co-operatives, collectives and federations to be socialist formations which can operate within a market. Syndicalists, market socialists, etc. would fall under this definition.

hugh3• 15 years ago

The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of production and distribution".

So, any system where people who work are free to buy shares in companies then?

hmottestad3• 15 years ago

Socialism != Communism

And there are many degrees of socialism.

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

brc5• 15 years ago

One swallow does not make a summer, and one happy entrepreneur does not equal a system which produces a lot of new companies.

Norway is a nice place and the culture and beliefs of the people mean that they have decided as a country to opt for a high social safety net and associated high taxes.

But trying to extract a hypothesis that somehow high taxes and social safety nets are somehow good for starting up a business is, well, stretching it somewhat.

Perhaps one of the reasons this guy found success is that so many of his countrymen can't be bothered because the extra effort isn't worth it. He clearly is motivated by more than money, so high taxation doesn't affect him much. So you could say Norways taxation system encourages people to build family style companies, and only suits entrepreneurs who aren't money-driven. That's an equally valid conclusion to draw from the article if you ask me.

Norse14• 15 years ago

The fact that Norway, followed by Denmark, has the highest rate of strtups in the world, according to the article, would seem to argue against the "one swallow" theory, and indicate full summer.

And it is not reasonable to assume that his countrymen can't be bothered when they are the most prolific in the world.

sbt• 15 years ago

My God, where to begin on this unnecessarily provocative link-bait fuckup of a story.

"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".

forza• 15 years ago

"It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide rates."

I wouldn't really call 36th "one of the highest", this is a myth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

RK• 15 years ago

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

I think the author means that you're told that smell is "drying fish" (I assume for eating), but to an outsider it just smells like rotting fish. Sarcastic humor.

ths• 15 years ago

Let's also not forget the fact that Norway is a very oil-rich country which brings a huge degree of wealth into the economy, and this skews the image considerably. You might have noticed that the guy the article talks about got rich selling stuff to -- guess who? -- the Norwegian oil industry.

The number of startups in a given community doesn't causate a great entrepreneurship scene. By that metric Norway could just give every team that's interested 50k dollars from their oil, call them a startup and automatically have a more vibrant startup scene than Silicon Valley. Troll economics, anyone?

People also overestimate the degree to which the US is capitalistic. Government spending in the US is now around 40%, with the free-market days of the pre-WWII era long replaced by a heavy-handed state that has never shrunk meaningfully. Maybe we Scandinavians run our bloated government bureaucracies more efficiently in our comparatively small, historically homogenous societies, but they're certainly not the reason we're rich. We're rich because we've been relatively free and capitalistic for a long time, also historically enjoying relatively low political corruption and a strong rule of law. At least that's the picture as I see it, being an Icelander that has lived and worked in Denmark I feel I grok the way these relatively small communities of my kinsmen work on a gut level.

One more thing: New Hampshire is one of the richest states in the USA, has about the same population as Norway and has a higher GDP per capita. If we're going to compare the US to Norway (one of the richest European countries) while excluding other much poorer countries from the equation, we should also compare New Hampshire to Europe to put things in proper perspective.

kunley• 15 years ago

Funny that in the information era one can learn from mistakes of others, yet many people don't do this.

As someone who lived half of a life in a country which was an experiment on socialism, I wish them luck. And I wish they regain their senses. Quickly.

relic173• 15 years ago

Very true. Many refuse to think logically and accept whatever happens to be the fashionable idea of the day. My family and I also had to witness a similar experiment. I join you in your wishes.

In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism

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