> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips.

This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

Running a business is definitely hard. I don’t think it’s for everyone. You need to handle failure, long hours, lack of balance, and disappointment in a sort of irrational way. Kind of like a fanaticism / religion of self. Ultimately it’s probably not healthy!

I don’t recommend persevering due to FOMO. See if working for others scratches the itch so you have something to compare it to.

> This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

This 100x! Many of the big influencers in these indie/startup/productivity niches seem to earn a lot of money at first sight. If you look deeper, a lot of these influencer seem to be making a lot of money from courses they are selling instead of operating the business they sell courses about.

My all time favorite is Robert T. Kiyosaki's book "Poor dad, rich dad". Pretty much everything he teaches about financial success is fiction. In reality he worked a regular 9 to 5 job, failed at starting his own business, and finally made money by selling this book and providing seminars.

You are completely correct. I hate this stuff that's peddled on YouTube, it's pretty simple, ask yourself what do they get out of telling you this if they are making so much money doing it. They are making money selling you courses.

What made me more susceptible I think is that my father made his money grinding up, buying a few flats , moving into full on property development. I paid no attention to his business until it was too late for me to learn from him (he died). Sure I worked on his building sites as a teenager, grafted cleaning out flats after tenants moved out (this is while my mates enjoyed their school holidays). He did pretty well and I grew up in a pretty affluent way. The stress was awful for him. I believe it fucked him up a bit. I have a few bad memories of him being a bit horrible. I forgive him that now looking back at the pressure he was under.

After his death I was desperate to emulate him. I began to think working for a salary was a mugs game. I paid for some bullshit property courses. Never went all in on anything thank god.

Anyway, eight years later I've accepted what I am, I'm in a job I actually like. I'll plough my furrow doing software and getting better at it. It's modest, but it's more certain. And uncertainty is the root of stress for me.

One bit of advice he gave me when I was complaining about working and having a manager etc "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time" I can see now that this is a great antidote to the bullshit financial freedom advice on YouTube

I appreciated your comment. However with respect to what your Dad told you :

> "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time"

that would have been true for him (being in property development). But there are people who build successful businesses or just work for themselves who never go into substantial debt and thus are free of any such 'creditor boss'.

True. Though anyone I know who is owns a business uses debt to grow it. But you make a fair point.

I fell into this whole startup hustle bubble a while ago, obviously I also read the book "Rich dad, poor dad". At least I tried, it was bad. Not only was it unrealistic, it also dismissed a whole lot of external factors at play at accumulating such wealth and didn't feel realistic at all. I did not know that he worked regular 9 to 5 and only generated his wealth by providing advice how to build wealth, but its not really surprising and fits the picture fairly well.

It made you poorer and him richer though, so from his perspective it's a good book.

This genuinely made me LOL

The takeaway I got from him was positive. First, start buying real estate and renting. THEN, with that financial security try to build a business of your own if you are motivated. The first part is hard to fail at, and you can do it while working a full time job.

He also mentioned that property is a liability, not an investment. I guess many property management companies would disagree.

> THEN, with that financial security ..

Nah, you'll just mooch off your stable unearned, unproductive income source for the rest of your life. It's called rent seeking -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking and it's the absolute core of the disease that is modern capitalism.

Basically, how VCs works too. And that's why we have to take their feedback carefully.

Yes, definitely. Invariably they're looking out for #1 first.

Just looked at his Twitter. Seems like he's gone off the deep end and is now grifting like Alex Jones. Posts about Fauci, woke liberals, FBI + KGB working in cahoots....pathetic, really.

He was always a Trump-like persona whose audience tended towards the same demographic.

I’ll teach you to become rich by teaching other people to become rich by teaching other…

It’s charlatans all the way down.

I am a fairly successful YouTuber, and the same thing exists in my space. It pains me to see the YouTube gurus out there, fleecing people of their money by selling them dreams. Dreams they themselves have not achieved.

Beware of anyone who is selling risk-free shortcuts to hard work. They also go by a different, less appealing name: get rich quick schemes.

i don't understand why people fall for it. if anyone is making a killing in their business, they're not going to sell a book about how to create a killing in thay field. (a) they don't need to because they're already making a killing (b) ahy create more competition for yourself/give away your secrets? if selling your secrets nets more money than the business... then obviously it wasn't a good business

In Italy we said: who knows make business, who do not teach how to make it. We have some journalists here selling courses I did not understand what business they was successful…

Would you mind naming who specifically you would put into that group?

E.g. Would you put Pieter Levels into that category?

And the ones that make money whose products sold to those "I bought shits from this popular guy", "I'm trendy now", too much bias.

It's the same way many startups make products that they sell to other tech companies.

What do people think of Alex Hormozi in this regard?

The insidious part is that these grifters make it seem as if everyone had a fair shot at the startup game, when in reality they just pretend it to make their audience of potential customers larger.

My experience going to business events is that all of the startup founders who made it had parents well into the top 1% or 0.1% of the income range. That's why it's so common to raise a $100k friends and family seed round and not even feel worried about losing it all.

If OP wasn't privileged enough, he/she might be doing everything correctly, but the results without a $100k megaphone will be very different.

Who are these “influencers” everyone is talking about? Never once in my lifetime I have ever heard anyone say “building a successful startup is easy!” WTF?

No, of course not. If it were easy, why would it take six payments of $24.95+S/H to teach you how to do it?

Shipping and handling for a digital course? Sounds suspect but if it’s guaranteed to make me rich and put me on a beach in six months, I’m sold.

This also applies to other fields. People also believe that it is simple to make money through day trading. There are many tiktok influencers and youtubers who portray themselves as millionaires, trading on a beach while digital nomading and giving nonsense advice. Yes, it is possible to make money day trading, but it takes a significant amount of learning, practice, patience, time, and discipline, and even then, the results are not always consistent, and it is not for everyone.

CAVEAT EMPTOR friend. I have day traded for 3 yrs. There is no edge to be had for retail day traders. It’s a suckers game, where the odds are stacked against you, just like in a casino. The platforms that trade against retail order-flow make all the money by front running trades at the sub-millisecond level, on every trade. It’s called electronic market-making. Everyone is a glorified speculator. Evidence is ask any of these influencers for an audited trade history or P&L… you’ll never see one. You may get lucky trading and win big, like a gambler, but if you keep playing, you’ll give everything back, then if you buy on margin or leverage with options, you’ll lose it all and more. There are no repeat fund managers that make the top of the list year after year. It’s just dumb luck, they get paid management fees (2 and 20) to gamble: Please save yourself years of misery.

biaheza on YouTube makes a bunch of good videos debunking the git rich quick schemes and showing the other side of the coin. https://www.youtube.com/@biaheza

Is he really though? I did view a bunch of his videos and realized the "Dropshipping course" for 294$. I obviously haven't watched the course, but dropshipping is basically one of the most popular "get rich quick schemes" on YouTube aside from daytrading.

I think he does talk about the difficulties in starting/running a drop shipping store in some of his vids. But I do agree, it add any cred that he's still trying to sell a "dropshipping course". I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone start drophipping, be it following his course or any other.

I've been working on day trading now for just over 5 years. I even took a sabbatical for 1.5 years to fully dedicate myself to it. Still struggling to be consistently profitable. I figure it's going to take me another few years to have be in the place where I feel I can give up my other career entirely. Easily the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Definitely right, 99% of influencers about day trading are full of shit

As I understand day trading is a full time job. How do you work on that for 5 years without profits?

> I figure it's going to take me another few years

What are you planning to learn or what skills are you planning gain or sharpen during that period?

i don't know nothing about day trading but it sounds hard AF to be profitable. even if you by some miracle figure out the winning formula... it won't last. others will figure it out and the game will change again. sounds exhausting!

I don't understand how OP could take that seriously. I can't think of anyone who has built a successful business and can trace their origins back to "I was very inspired by people on Twitter". I thought it would have been obvious that real success takes real work. "Digital influencers" are nothing more than sad people craving for attention online. Their success relies on idiots trying to mimic their "success". It's an emotional Ponzi scheme. Don't get stuck swimming in their vomit.

And you're really almost hitting the point directly - but this guy just seems to "want" to be the owner of a tech-startup, rather then someone with a good tech idea who then turns it into a successful business.

Everyone is selling a dream, and people are willing to buy because they fall in love with the "idea" of the dream - I think unless I had some actually insane, never thought of tech, I would NEVER want to be a tech-startup. Everyone is trying to take advantage of you to fulfil their own dreams, ironically

Anyone who thinks working from a beach is possible has never tried.

The screen isn't always readable.

And many people who sit nearby aren't working and maybe living and making memories.

Lifeguards. Ice-cream salespeople. Pamela Anderson. FALSE!

Don’t forget about regular interruptions by the beach sales team network if you end up on a resort there part of the beach path is public access.

Having done enough of the travel to paradise to work to realize for me that it doesn’t provide either with enough depth, and if I like deep experiences I should consider that.

It sounds to me like your expectations are way out of whack.

I’ve seen friends, acquaintances, and colleagues become entrepreneurs. Without an exception, every one that has a serious social media presence is a fraud. They have a company that is either money losing or fed by their parents. They pretend to be entrepreneur geniuses on social media but really have done nothing but basically be instagram models.

The people I know who have successfully started companies are nothing like this. They usually have industry experience directly involved with or at least closely related to what they start (e.g “my company has to do this ourselves every time but we’d definitely hire it out if we could”).

My advice would be stick to climbing in whatever industry you think you’ll enjoy most and just keep your eyes open. Worst case scenario you’ll have a good career

Also one needs to keep in mind that many startup "successes" are actually either negative or neutral outcomes. I know several "acquisitions" where the end result was investors making negative returns (receiving back pennies-on-the-dollar, if anything.) Meanwhile, the former CEO gets a cushy job as an advisor at the new place, announcements all over social media, etc. The actual companies barely had any revenue.

This was the case with Rancher being acquired by SUSE. The financials were so out of whack for a normal acquisition but SUSE had a dire need to acquire a k8s company and Rancher wanted to exit and now the board has huge regrets over spending so much on something thats brought so little value to the business!

Yep so called firesales. One of the companies I worked at sold so low all employees options were worthless. But they were in the news and they had been on Deloitte’s fastest growing startups for a few years (never reached profit).

Agreed, expectations are everything or at least very important to keep sanity in this area.

Reality is that big majority of startup-s do fail to "make it" 90% of time to even be self sustaining. Financially meaning that you pay from your pocket overall and the resources have to come somewhere, day job or whatever, making it very much overwhelming and can break even a strong man. Only small percentage out of those 10% actually make it to sustainable enough to live by.

Percentages can begin to rise on your favour after learning from failures but there is of course no guarantees, some domains are inherently much less forgiving or have fierce competition. It is important to resarch and understand the landscape you're going into.

If you realise your odds then mindset starts to get clearer, you know what you risk losing and accept that loss is likely, you still put enough effort to win but don't set your mind so deep that everything collapses with the project.

It might be contrary to some suggestions that you have to put everything into startup to have a chance but that is also correct imo, you do have to be able to invest all your available time on the project. Keeping in mind that the project is not absolute everything in life and being able to walk away at right time as to not sunk endless resources to unfruitful endeavour keep you healthier.

Excellent advice

I am so sorry you feel bad. Want some advice from an older engineer turned entrepreneur? Be proud of what you have done. Not many people take risks in life. You did. Being the 'man in the arena' is enough. I read this quote from Teddy Roosevelt often:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

To yours I add this from Teddy Roosevelt:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

I'm loving all these Teddy Roosevelt quotes -- I have one more, not from Roosevelt, but from the Dalai Lama, that I often think about.

For me it represents doing what you can and the effort spending towards a goal.

"If after trying to save the world, the world is lost, no regrets." - Dalai Lama

Thank you for this, this lifted me up.

I'm going through something similar to the OP, I haven't given up yet and don't really consider it either. But, it's really hard. My mental health certainly took a hit and I'm full of anxiety as my savings are not enough to cover the upcoming bills and couldn't find a contracting gig so far to support the cashflow. I've experienced severe panic attacks and bouts of depression. I sometimes dread the passing of days.

Hope I'll find a way.

It might be illogical to say this but I know we'll make it one way or another. I believe in what we are doing and what we built actually resonated with the customers as well. Just need to power through this last mile somehow.

Anyway, reading your comment gave me a little more strength. Much appreciated.

I have had anxiety/depression too my whole life. Took me years to understand it and figure out a path forward. Therapy, meds helped a lot. And it took me decades to get the skill and perspective to start a company. Life is pretty long, if you spend 5-10 years dealing with depression -- you still have a 30 years of work to try new things once you learn to deal with your biology!

TBH that's a perspective I did not have. At 27 years old I feel like I've been slow and like I'm late for some of the aspirations I've had. I tend to look at things from a daily perspective. Today and tomorrow.

Thinking in decades however, reframes and somewhat changes the problems. I'll keep this in mind.

What language do you use. I'm willing to help push for free if I know the language

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed."

- Theodore Roosevelt

One of the original startup influencers of his time.

I've had this quote bookmarked for 7 years now.

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail and you have to be ok with that for yourself. Even how many times you try. It is ok, it does not make you a failure because you tried. It makes you a brave and daring person you tried.

It does not help that the media only celebrates the few lucky ones, and because they were lucky they will propagate all their steps of wonderful execution, but overlooking the fact that they were just with the right timing, market & people. That it was pure luck.

There are more journeys in life to be happy than being an entrepreneur. There are more paths towards personal fulfilment.

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail.

If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again.

It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die.

One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and prefer to yammer endlessly about tax cuts instead of thinking about how the welfare foundation can help entrepreneurship.

Fortunately there are some successful people who talk about this. For example in Finland the Supercell founders (gaming company with $10B exit) have been emphasizing the importance of the welfare structures for enabling entrepreneurship opportunities.

As someone living in Finland, I would argue the cons balance out the pros. The welfare state also creates massive disincentives for entrepreneurs. There is no free lunch.

In addition to the psychological aspects mentioned below (why try so hard when you’ll be fine either way), there are bigger reasons.

While the safety net makes it less dangerous to fail, it also makes it harder to succeed.

The barrier you need to clear before the business can be successful is much higher, due to:

- 15-20% higher taxes than the US at every level. Cut your profit margin by 15% and you need roughly double the amount of revenue you’d need in the US to pay yourself a good salary.

- high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)

- inability to hire full time employees until you get much bigger (they literally cannot be fired and if one goes on maternity leave you can be stuck paying someone without getting their labor for a year+)

-lack of funding/financing and risk capital (Europe is starting to catch up, but nowhere near the US, especially at the small business levels). There’s nothing like the SBA loans the US has.

-more severe penalties for failure in the form of bankruptcy, you cannot walk away relatively unscathed in the same you can in the US

-impossibility of building wealth by working a job to fund the business yourself (salaries are extremely low due to the massive social benefits overhead)

I recently moved back to Finland after a couple of years in New York, and I strongly disagree with this:

> “high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)”

My fixed monthly expenses were over 3x higher in Manhattan than in Helsinki. Housing, child care, etc.

Were the local salaries 3x higher in Manhattan?

In my experience, yes.

>less dangerous to fail [...] harder to succeed

Alternatively: Finland has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling.

Unfortunately another component of the Nordic model that makes it work is that everybody trusts the government. This is what makes the Nordic model hard to translate to other settings in my opinion.

They're high trust societies in general, partially because they're small monocultures. As Robert Putnam's research shows, in multicultural societies, especially large ones, trust rapidly declines, surprisingly even within cultural groups. Trust in government falls even more rapidly as each group starts to perceive those in power as being more favorable to one group or another, even if those in power are from their own cultural group.

I've distinctly noticed this in my own life, being born and raised in the western US, but having lived throughout the US, my trust in my "fellow Americans" declines the further away from the mountain west I get. My spouse is Finnish, and we've lived in Finland for years, and have independently observed that their homogeneous society definitely makes their rosy politics possible. I bring this up when people try to compare US and Finnish domestic politics. There is often a "it works in <Finno/Scandinavia>!" rhetoric when discussing health care, schools, or whatever. Comparatively, Finnish politics are boring and uneventful.

"High trust" seems entirely contradictory to Danish society. Universal skepticism and a universal dislike for every other human in existence are the core ideologies here.

Maybe a tendency to not interfere with tasks assigned to others to avoid having to deal with people is being misinterpreted as trust?

No. My Norwegian colleagues trust that they will receive healthcare. They trust that their representatives in the government are acting more or less in good faith. They trust that money in the government is going towards protections and services and infrastructure. And if you look around in Norway, you can generally get the feeling that the government is taking care of things.

Go to America and it seems like the country is a decayed husk wrapped in gold. Roads are barely functional. Schools do not educate children. Each day there is a new story about a politician who is corrupt either through insider trading, being a pedo, or whatever. The government of America does not appear to do things for Americans.

Thus, it's easy to see why you can trust the government in Norway but not in America to me.

Americans really think their schools don't provide solid education, it's so weird. Look at your PISA scores, they're reasonable. Could be a lot better, sure, but so could almost everything. Especially if you take into account how most countries with better education systems have less than a 1/3 of the population, are mostly developed monocultural nation-states, so a lot more capable of standardizing public services nationwide.

Exactly... it's the mono-culture and relatively small population and distances that allow this to work relatively well. If the US actually reverted closer to the original Confederation it was started as, each state could possibly do these things, but as a whole, it's really hard... and becomes ever more divisive... At this point, largely, only corporate interests feeding both sides seem to get anything done.

But don't you know that the only reason people want to have more control over their own lives and influence state politics is to be racist? That is why we must entrust the federal government with more and more power to run everything (with the help of The Experts™, who all happen to go to the same few schools).

No it's not. Norway overall is 75% ethnic Norwegian with the rest being immigrants. Oslo the capital is only 50% ethnic Norwegian. It's very strange to me to identify Norway as monoculture. Usually i think the person has never been to Norway when they say that.

How many of those immigrants are allowed to vote? The US, by contrast has a massive amount of immigrant populations, multiple generations in with varied backgrounds, over a massively larger scale of both population and land mass. My high school didn't have a majority from any single racial group.

> No. My Norwegian colleagues trust that they will receive healthcare. They trust that their representatives in the government are acting more or less in good faith. They trust that money in the government is going towards protections and services and infrastructure.

This is not quite true in Denmark.

There's have been multiple cases in recent times with the government willingly taking illegal action. Trust in public health care is that it'll keep you alive, but that's getting a nurse to look at you takes half a workday and the majority of the staff is running away due to poor pay. Those needing psychological help have generally been neglected, and those with gender identity issues are borderline abused. Environmental policies are "revised" as we get close to the deadline and haven't made the progress needed.

So I would not say that there is trust in the government and its services - merely an understanding that as change is very slow, you can expect the same tomorrow as you do today. That the US is worse is somewhat of a different discussion to whether or not the Danish people is a "high trust" society.

The data suggest that the Danes are very trusting, but they may not be measuring what you experience: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

I don’t think you can describe at least Sweden and Norway as monocultural. They’ve had waves of immigration since the world wars and I think Sweden had the most immigration per capita in Europe during the Syrian refuge crisis.

That’s not to say it’s a rosy picture of multiculturalism, there has been at least a building up of angst in the minority parties over immigration (and islam).

Don't mistake trust for tacit consent. Trust is never valid in politics.

Rather, "trusting" a system which makes it so that you do not need to trust any government.

Having many large political parties and a trend of (almost) always having minority governments also help limit possible damage.

I don't really feel like there is a large number of parties in Norway when arbeiterpartiet wins 35% of the vote every time and Parliament switch between them and the conservative party. And this time around the farming party really decided to screw things up for the coalition. But I suppose this is better then the republicans and the democrats for (insert whatever reason you want here).

In Denmark, the biggest party "only" got 27% of the votes, and 12 parties ended up in parlament.

But yes, the comparison was mainly to the whacky US system with just two sides to pick from.

Don't forget the other reason: a homogenous society.

Absolutely, and this explains largely why most of the massively successful startups we all know comes from the Nordics and not from places with poor social security like the USA

Sarcasm noted. Seriously, though, this is somewhat easy to explain.

Much of America does have an amazing "safety net": generational wealth.

There's a reason why startups tend to spring from elite schools like Stanford, MIT, Yale, etc. Those kids have the brains, yes, but also the family connections and the parental safety nets and the connections to capital investment. These kids don't have to worry about food security or having healthcare.

If you're from that upper 10%/5%/1% or so of American society, that's GREAT!

It's an incredible primordial soup from which startups can spring. We are a big country, so we are still talking about perhaps 30,000,000+ people in this lucky category. That's more than all of Scandinavia's population combined. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many "big" startups come from the USA.

However, if you don't come from one of these blessed demographics in the USA, you have a much harder road. If you didn't go to an "elite" school and don't have a parental safety net it's very difficult... I fall into this category and simply didn't have access to healthcare for five years while I pursued my tiny indie business. It made money, but not enough to buy healthcare for a family, so I had to ditch it.

I grew up in a lower-middle class household and although my grandfather had money during his life, it wasn't passed down (swallowed by medical bills the last decades of his life). My parents were definitely working class. I'm doing okay, but that came from a lot of self-study and self-driven interests... I put my first computer together from parts scrownged up over the course of about a year... at a time where it was far more expensive to do than today (early-mid 90's), where today you can definitely find something usable for free.

Today it will largely come down to the investment of time... that doesn't mean you will succeed... I spent my time on knowledge growth, others will spend it on building a business. Most will simply waste it and complain that they spend too much time working.

I saw a lot of this when I was single in the last decade. So many people want a relationship, too few would actually take the time to make it happen. Most won't even take the time/effort to go out on a date on a work night.

No, it's not easy. There are no guarantees... but it's mostly laziness that stops people from getting things done in life.

But its not just an economic safety net that is required. (Although that's part of it). It's also the network of social connections, family connections and upbringing. A stable childhood and family life, I would argue, is probably even more important. In a lot of ways, welfare support (at least how its been done in USA) has driven a wedge into the stability of the family (by decreasing marriage incentives, removing the father from the home, removing incentives, etc.) Not everybody is born with the same ambitions as those that attend MIT.

Generational wealth doesn’t cover it. Stanford, MIT, Yale have lots of non-legacy attendees there based completely on academic performance.

> That's more than all of Scandinavia's population combined. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many "big" startups come from the USA.

Expand it to all of the European countries with free healthcare to match the populations and the outcome is the same.

There is some subset that has to bail because of healthcare, but it’s not relevant in the larger picture.

While this may be true for individual cases. Statistically the argument is worthless. Frankly, it's a comforting lie that encourages harmful inaction by instilling a false sense of the playing field being close to even.

The children of the top 1% make up 14.5% of the admissions to these schools. The chart of students by parental income[0] speaks for itself.

The children of the bottom 20% make up a mere 3.8% of the student body. I'm not sure how anyone can look at the current situation and suggest there's nothing wrong with it.

Perhaps these people are inherently inferior? Instead, I would suggest that we should do something about the talent that we're intentionally wasting.

[0] Chetty R. et al, Figure I. B, MOBILITY REPORT CARDS: THE ROLE OF COLLEGES IN INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY, Page 80. url: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23618/w236..., image: https://i.redd.it/tbh2qmozodv91.png

Your point isn’t coming out like you think. What you just said was 80% of the student body is middle class.

No, what was said is that ~15% of the student body is in the top 1%. The top 5% by income make up 42% of the student body. I'm not sure about your own definition but I wouldn't qualify that as middle class.

I don't view 95% of the population making up 58% of the student body as an indicator that we're doing things particularly well. Especially when you don't ignore the fact the bottom 20% make up only 3.8% of students and the bottom 60% of the population only account for 18%.

These statistics fly in the face of any belief in meritocracy, social mobility, access to education, academic achievement etc. They imply either the children of the top 5% are genetic superhumans or that, as a society, we're failing spectacularly at living up to those goals.

> There's a reason why startups tend to spring from elite schools like Stanford, MIT, Yale, etc. Those kids have the brains, yes, but also the family connections and the parental safety nets and the connections to capital investment. These kids don't have to worry about food security or having healthcare.

Yeah, and then go on to create things like Theranos, Alameda and FTX... never mind the obscene amount of these kids who end up in banks and hedge funds because of their connections that end up destroying the global economy thorough their grift.

I'm a former boot-strapped founder and a strong believer in entrepreneurialism, but you have to be brain-dead levels of naive to not know the odds are entirely against coming in you but to then think you're on the same playing field as the children of the privileged makes it clear one really doesn't have the slightest skill-set it takes to make it in that World: if your discernment is woefully inadequate to see the reality of being wealthy, how can you ever see, build and ultimately profit from market or paradigm shifts?

> However, if you don't come from one of these blessed demographics in the USA, you have a much harder road. If you didn't go to an "elite" school and don't have a parental safety net it's very difficult... I fall into this category and simply didn't have access to healthcare for five years while I pursued my tiny indie business. It made money, but not enough to buy healthcare for a family, so I had to ditch it.

I think these are the untold stories that really should be more widely known and perhaps even celebrated: when something doesn't reach unicorn level, but still does what it sought out to do but cannot grow/scale in order to justify it's immense effort is more honest and real to the reality of how most small startups go and end up.

Personally speaking my end-goal was to ultimately challenge Federal Law to make hemp legal in order to serve as a much needed cash crop to help offset climate change via carbon sequestration and possibly aid in the decrease use of opioids for pain and provide more usecases for something I feel incredibly passionate about: Bitcoin and Farmers.

After the Farm bill was passed in 2018, nearly 4 years since launch, I realized 'we won' as I saw all the signs in front of my face I saw no point in working 90+ hour work weeks and having no Life what so ever because I dissapointed my partners and family so I just leveraged my acquired skill-set in various private Industries and continued to travel the World for new opportunities.

Ultimately the money I made, in BTC, could have made me a millionaire several times if I never spent it and just held on to it over the years, but as mentioned before I was also not of the privileged class and needed those funds to ever rising rents, food, or the rainy day funds use in between jobs.

I don't regret it, but like JB I had to exit and focus on other priorities when I realized the reality that it was never going to be much more than it was, profitable but not b much, never mind ever being a unicorn.

I've since did corpo life and to be honest, their is a reason former startup founders are preferable over most candidates, the harder part is actually getting your foot in the door to be able to prove why that is.

I think it’s cultural. The US places a lot of value on striving out and doing new things. It’s a frontier culture. Older cultures tend to be more conservative.

You can see this effect inside the US. The most “business friendly” states often do not lead in entrepreneurship because they’re culturally more conservative.

I disagree. Texas has been one of the fastest growing economies in the states. With a lot of technology companies.

Texas isn't the lowest tax or lowest regulation state, though it's a bit lower than California.

I also think the cultural thing is obvious there. Texas is very pro-entrepreneurship generally.

Texas has no income tax, very little government owned land, no zoning in some places, etc. It’s laughable that you try to put it in the “bit lower than California” category. Texas is basically the opposite approach to governance than California.

Missing the /s here mate

Flip side of the welfare state is the heavy tax burden.

Heavily progressive income tax makes it harder for individuals to accumulate capital for enterprenial endeavours, be it their own or investing in others'. This limits early stage investments and growth.

Also, there are limited incentives in investing in careers and productivity as net income is surprisingly similar in lowest 10% and highest 10% income earners.

Burden? If the substrate/infrastructure you're playing in is maintained by our tax money, count your blessings and work to build trust in a system that, as others in this thread have already said, helps set everyone up to more-safely fail and grow. No one person is so important that we need to cultivate philanthropists. I'd far rather we collectively decide what to do with wealth generated from natural resources (all the way up to human resources). We can do better than the relatively few wealthy people with the means and inclination to give back.

The question is, how do we build a stronger representative government in the United States (where I live) when we're so divided and distrusting? Having a common enemy might work, but it can't be another group of people to go to war with. Might need to be the metaphorical devil(s) on our shoulders, and for that we need good mental health training from a young age, which now, given how broken and dispersed so many family groups are, requires tax money guided by science and wisdom.

You and I are here but a moment. The bleeding edge of life will quickly pass us by, and the positive impact I am most proud of is the love and care I give to future generations, human and otherwise.

The taxation part is a burden no matter the outcome. It’s not optional, it’s a duty as a citizen to give a chunk of your money to the government. That is the load we are obligated to bear - a burden.

Also, you’re romanticizing what happens with tax money. When a major portion of it is going to a military I have no say in, I don’t get warm fuzzy feelings contributing my portion to the feds.

> how do we build a stronger representative government in the United States (where I live) when we're so divided and distrusting?

You’re assuming the conclusion here. Many people want a much weaker federal government and your question can be rephrased as “how do we make the anti-government people go away?”

He's saying the heavy tax burden drains capitol accumulation. Too generous benefits prohibits the filtering mechanism built into markets that stops a society's resources from being drained into unproductive resources. Not ideal, but advocates of near universal welfare support do not seem to have a good answer to this problem.

Their tax rates are only a few percentage points different from ours. I think the difference is that we funnel 20% of it to the military (2% for Norway) and their tax code probably has fewer loopholes for the rich to exploit.

Their total tax burdens are much higher than US citizens' tax burdens unless you're making 7 figures of W-2 income. The top marginal tax rate kicks in an order of magnitude lower in those countries, and hits most of the middle class. In the US, it hits very few people.

Also, the military is 20% of the discretionary budget, but 10% or less of the total budget.

When I at one point considered moving to the US, I did the numbers for UK and Norway, because I'm from Norway and live in the UK, and while Norway certainly came out higher in terms of tax than some US states, comparing with places I might be prepared to consider, like California, the difference was small enough it'd be more than eaten up by health insurance before considering the other costs of a reduced welfare system (e.g. needing a far bigger cushion in case of unemployment, far higher childcare costs etc.)

Your mileage will of course vary a lot depending on specifics, and especially which US states you compare with.

Yes, it is remarkably hard to come up with a US tax rate, because in single-payer healthcare countries your healthcare is covered. Here, how much do you pay? I couldn't even begin to guesstimate.

While you could probably find cheaper places to live in the US than California, and therefore find much more agreeable tax rates, it's not that easy. Culture varies a lot in the US. I love the South, but a some folks would rather drink poison than live there.

And you can't forget property taxes. These vary at the county or city level and can be quite significant. And, just for fun, they generally pay for the public schools, which depending on where you are may be abysmally awful, so now your "tax rate" includes stumping for private school, which could be the equivalent to a year's salary in some Nordic countries.

Health care in the US is effectively a corporate tax and should be labelled as such.

If you want to compare the real costs and benefits of starting a business you need to compare like for like, which includes all national, state, and privatised taxes and other indirect costs.

When you include those the reality-based answer is that the US fares relatively poorly.

Which is why the US has a more aggressive VC sector. Whether by accident or design start-ups are forced to look for outside funding far earlier, and bootstrapping is far harder.

The result is more of a monoculture that chases unicorns and less of a vibrant sector of independent small and medium businesses, some of which will grow into unicorns naturally.

For a full picture factor in outgoings for world class health and education per person (and other benefits that are free | much cheaper than US); these are very low cost for individuals and offset higher taxes by offering better value for money.

If this is indeed the case, shouldn't there be an influx of skilled professional and entrepreneur immigrants into all of these nordic welfare states?

Something doesn't quite add up, as there's appears to be a constant shortage of such talent.

Sweden actually is one of the favourite destinations for immigrants.

Perhaps high skilled ones would prefer a country with better climate ... :-)

"World class" health and education brings you some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world[1]. Doubling Canada's rate and adding a bit more really screams world class.

You do pay out the ass for it though so good job making someone rich I guess? Shame about all the dead babies though[2].

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health... [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality... [2] https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2019-an...

> "World class" health and education brings you some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world ...

Just to be clear, I was referring to the Nordic countries, Australia, better performing OECD countries, etc and not referring to the US.

Your links bear out my position, that US "free market | low taxes" approach doesn't deliver good outcomes for the masses.

Indeed! Forgive me, I misinterpreted your earlier post to be claiming that the "low cost" of US healthcare offsets the "high taxes" of comparable countries.

US total government spending is officially 34% of total GDP, Germany is 43.7%. With much of that covering healthcare and collage education which more than makes up the difference for the median family. In the end, the US’s extreme defense spending and horrifically inefficient healthcare system is a massive drag on the economy.

What the US does differently from most of the EU is to hide as much spending as possible in the form of targeted tax breaks. From a cash flow perspective little changes but from a political standpoint it’s not spending.

US military spending is 4% of GDP. When a warmonger is president, that goes up to about 6% of GDP. The NATO commitment is 2% of GDP. It is not particularly extreme.

The real drag is the US healthcare system, which effectively finances most of the medical R&D for the US, India, South America, and Europe, and also provides ridiculous levels of treatment for people who are about to die (in comparison to other health systems). There is also the US social security system, which seems to be very inefficient at best...

Officially it’s $1.64 Trillion in 2022 on defense vs ~23.4 Trillion GDP or 7% GDP. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=... You can see different numbers based on if you include stuff like the DoE spending on nuclear weapon ‘stewardship’ or only parts of the coast guard, national guard, VA etc.

US healthcare spending hardly subsidizes the rest of the world. Paperwork and insurance overhead don’t magically turn into R&D money. Litigation, malpractice insurance, excessive testing etc is just waste.

At best ~12% of US healthcare spending is for retail drugs, but it’s not that relevant globally when you consider how much US companies are spending on advertising vs R&D. Which is then compounded by how much more expensive US drug trials are.

That's the budget. The actual outlays are less than $1 billion. Around 3-4% for the last few years.

The only way outlays are under 1 Trillion is if you ignore a great deal of defense spending. A classic trick is to hide future obligations like pensions and other benefits from current spending numbers, but if you need to hand out a pension to get people to work for you then obviously you should include either current spending in past obligations or the amount of additional obligations your adding this year as spending.

So yes, you can get imaginary defense costs to ~4%, but I ask you where is the coast guard, national guard, DoE, or VA’s budget here? “The budget funds five branches of the U.S. military: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Some might argue the national guard isn’t defense spending but we sent 250,000 guard members to Iraq and the guard is fielding F-35’s.

I will acknowledge some some outliers like the United States Border Patrol, while it’s job is literally defending the border it probably shouldn’t be included in defense spending.

PS: It gets even sillier, not that long ago we where hiding the cost of the Iraq war from defense spending numbers.

For comparable benefits per citizen, the US are prohibitively expensive.

The argument that other countries might be technically higher in taxes will remain moot so long as in the US, needing an ambulance could mean years of financial hardship if you're not sufficiently well off. The same goes for lodging, food safety, etc.

You haven’t accounted for health insurance, college education, and possibly retirement.

Once you add those in, the Nordics still pay a bit more, but not by the margin you might expect.

The US government provides retirement benefits, including healthcare at retirement. You are not required to pay for college, and you can go to a cheap school if you want.

Early stage investment is usually paying below-market salaries of entrepreneurs — that is, doing exactly what the government would, except the government doesn’t take a big cut of your startup.

Additionally, the government doesn’t require you to network with the right people, come from the right subculture, etc.

Do you want your “taxes” to go to the needy or the wealthy? Because in startups angel investors are capturing bigger percentages of the capital from your labor than the government.

In Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Sweden, the income distribution ratio[0] of the total income earned by the top 20% of earners vs the bottom 20% of earners is about ~4x. Denmark has a personal income tax rate of 56% [1]

Best data I could find[2] after a quick google on USA puts income distribution ratio around 5.2x, so not much of a substantial difference in gross income disparity vs USA at the 20th/80th percentiles. Personal income tax rate is about 37%[3], so certainly USA lets you keep more of your paycheck than Denmark.

So high earners in US are making ~20% more than their peers in Denmark relative to the bottom 20% in their respective countries, and folks in the US pay ~20% less tax as well.

Certainly it's a notable difference but we're not talking orders of magnitude here, especially since the above math doesn't account for all of the benefits that higher tax rate brings, both tangible and intangible.

However, when we're talking in absolute numbers, most Danes out-earn most Americans. The median wage in the US is ~$52k [4] vs Denmark at ~$72k [5], which closes the gap even more.

I suspect there are significant differences and outliers at the extremes however, and that is likely where most of the VC money lives - whether we're talking about angel investors dropping >$100k or VCs spending millions on pre-revenue companies. I'd wager we're well into the top 1% of earners in the US doing the funding. This is the most likely explanation to account for the differences in early stage investments and growth opportunities you described above, imho.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/income-distribution-eur...

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/personal-income-tax-rat...

[2] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...

[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income-t...

[4] https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/united-states

[5] https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/denmark

I come from the game development world and this is one of the reasons (in my opinion) why there are so many solid independent game makers that come from the Nordics.

> This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

That is a false romantization. The reality is if you live in Copenhagen you need a full time job to to pay for expensive rent, food, and of course tax. That is not true in Berlin where rent, food, and taxes are cheaper. On average the price level in Berlin is half of that of Copenhagen.

Not to mention a social norm that prides work ethic.

I started my first couple of companies in Norway, and it certainly makes a difference to the feeling of risk to live in a place where the risk of failing just didn't enter my mind at all.

In fact, I'd almost certainly have gotten more a month in welfare support if I'd been unable to find a new job if we'd closed my first company down than what we paid ourselves.

There's a flip side to this argument in that more failing endeavors would be allowed to exist for longer, thus draining productive resources from more worthy endeavors.

I don't think so. It's not cheaper to run a company in Norway than the US, and cost of living is high, and the fact we could've shut the company down and get more money meant we only kept running it because we were hoping to make more money rather than out of fear of where we'd be if it failed.

The benefits if anything serves as an incentive to give up failing ventures sooner.

The problem with Nordic model is that they are too successful in taking care of the people.

Very few are “hungry” and “hunger” is an important ingredient to startups

Cool, I guess less hunger for less startups is a good deal.

I don't know that I agree. As much as I lean towards a Libertarian, anti-establishment PoV for the US, I do think social systems can work in smaller communities/countries. It's much harder with a more diverse (distance and politic) country because there's much more "other" that will disagree and see favoritism and corruption. It also becomes a cycle.

I've worked in/around govt that I'm not a no government mindset, but definitely feel that more government tends to be worse than a very limited one at the scale of the US... and would favor letting states/counties have more independent creativity in solutions.

And that is why, in the USA, health care is not a given (or at least extremely affordable). As long as that is then - especially if you have a family - taking risk that might lead to failure is a no go.

Instead, the no risk route is to assimilate into the status quo, become a cog in The System's wheel. Providing foundational First World "human rights" would allow more professional / career freedom.

> taking risk that might lead to failure is a no go.

For certain personality types. Let's say with some high conviction, the typical technology / engineering personality is already highly risk adverse.

Thus - they need all the risk avoidance as possible. Entrepreneurship is a risk game. It is defined by risk; those that won't start without safety nets will probably never start at all.

I know enough family men who built startups for years with young kids - earning nothing. It's not the situation, it's the person.

Not to get off-topic but startups are risky. On the other hand - at least in my book - entrepreneurs are actual risk-adverse. That is, where others see too much risk, entrepreneurs see opportunity. They are actually risk blind to some extent.

But like I said, this another discussion for another day :)

Interestingly, the US still ranks #1 in the world in Entrepreneurship and Switzerland is #2.

Source: https://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-...

I think the reason why welfare is irrelevant here is because the people going into entrepreneurship tend to be skilled enough to find a good-paying job even if their startup fails. Suppose that you're a good product manager or a good developer that's going into the startup world and you don't get lucky with your startup, you'd still be able to find a good job as soon as you're done... in fact, you might even get a higher-paying job because of this experience you've had.

Except in years like 2022 when it seems harder than ever to get a job, even with a solid 10 year working history. I'm convinced it's a more competitive market than ever, and that means more rejections.

I'm being sort of picky, focused on quality over quantity of opportunities, but it doesn't mean your statement is true.

And you have the Federal Reserve right now with that as their stated objective to try to keep a lid on inflation. Not saying this is the right more or not, but that's the unfortunate position we are now in.

But those skills are still getting diverted from more productive means. Those pursuits are allowed to exist for longer for the dream that they will someday be massively productive. Look at the blockchain space to see all the companies that are about to go under, if they haven't already.

It's easy enough to get SMB loans in the US without risking anything. Banks are asking to sell $100,000 loans without people even applying! Not to mention grants, and yes, literally welfare is available in the US to pretty much everyone. What exactly are you afraid of? I think the bigger issue with entrepreneurship here is that most people aren't willing to put in the effort to solve a problem that people need solved. Instead they put in the effort to solve a problem that they feel like solving and then blame "the system" when their attempt at entrepreneurship doesn't pan out.

> This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

So then the Nordics are the startup capitals of the world, far surpassing all other countries, right? Right?

Travis Kalanick (Uber's founder) collected unemployment while working on his startup.

Oasis (and lots of other British bands) got dole money while honing their craft. I think it's one of the reasons Britain tended to hit above it's weight in the 80s/90s.

This doesn't strike me as something inherently part of entrepreneurship in a world-wide context, but rather something particular to anglo saxon countries, and especially Americans which are big on neoliberal ideology. Americans are also the most anti-government of any people I know.

The Netherlands is split in this I think, but the entrepreneurs I know are nothing like this. They appreciate the safety net and often happily pax taxes, its more that they hate the labour involved. And everybody I speak to has acutely aware of the possibility of failure. Maybe its my circle though, there are also more radical libertarians in my country, but they are a rarity.

My view, from the U.S., is that most founders want to make it on their own and keep the returns close to the vest (aka "low taxes).

The risks are too high to found a company for little payoff.... and most founders that exit already pay a significant tax on exits (even when they are structured to reduce tax). Entrepreneurship is too hard of a game to put up with the mental and work grinding for a decade for small returns. Everyone focuses on the "money" a founder may make (with heavy survivorship bias) - but don't focus on the high probability of losing years, or a decade, of lost revenue and social life if a company fails.

HN is filled with want-trapreneurs who are mis-guided about the game they're entering.

Is "my intuition" a euphemism for "I've read an Ayn Rand novel"?

It's funny, I read that as a retelling of John Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote, not as a Randian Just So story. Being averse to paying tax isn't a desirable quality in a person.

I personally think being opposed to high rates of taxation is a desireable quality in a person but that was orthogonal to my hunch, which I was trying to present as neutrally as possible, with no value judgment. The parent comment is unnecessarily inflammatory.

It's also easier with a largely mono-culture in a relatively small population/area that is inclined, socially and historically, to work. Contrasted by say USSR, China or other communist societies where it's largely forced and the people are largely, effectively slaves. Although that work first culture is coming at the cost, to an extent, of a waning family unit.

It's a bit of a mixed bag that's much harder to implement at a larger scale. If the US split up into separate states, much more loosely joined like the EU or original confederate structure before the constitution, each state would stand a better chance at such a system.

That’s easy. The hugely successful entrepreneurs that have been able to start their business due to the welfare state contribute back by paying taxes on their success. I’m a decently successful saas-founder, and I don’t mind paying taxes on my profits. I don’t view it as being robbed. I view it as contributing back to the system that backed me.

Also, banks should chip in a lot more than they do. They’re basically printing money and should be taxed harder.

Norway, not Finland.

>The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce.

Sure, the thought of being worth only 150 billion dollars rather than 300 would stop Bezos from starting Amazon.

Can confirm. Lived a very frugal early retirement lifestyle in Austria because it was practically impossible to build wealth (high taxes, comparatively very low tech salaries, little entrepreneurial support/incentives).

Moving to the US I was able to 5-6x my income (from what I could have realistically made) , while reducing my tax burden by 15 percentage points, and so I've been happily living a workaholics' lifestyle since.

Looking back, it really boggles my mind how much engineering potential is squandered in Europe. You'd have to be an idiot to want to work hard given how raw of a deal you are getting (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) and people understand that intuitively (hence pushing for ever fewer work hours or even days because what else is there if your salary is essentially capped and you quickly hit a 50 % tax rate (when combining income tax and social security) for every additional hour worked).

</rant>

> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!)

I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on.

I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45% of it to the society as a whole, so also who cannot afford the economy of scale (e.g., nurses, teachers), can still have a decent life.

I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

You're missing something here. You can omit the first sentence. People already believe they deserve a better life than 95% of the population, even without being able to code specifically.

That's... illuminating. Really. It's a sad take, but could completely be true.

It's not "I am a engineer, thus I deserve to have more", it's "I deserve more, what part of my life can I use to say this?".

But I don't think it's sad. The desire to have more for ourselves and our children (why else would they be talking about buying a family home?) is a large part of the reason why living standards keep rising.

If everyone desires to be above average and strives to produce more, earn more, then over time the average will rise. This is good.

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

What if we worded this in a different way: "I have a skill which is more in demand than the skills of 95% of the population"

And this is why I say that I understand the economics behind it.

Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

So, while I am able to earn more, I am happy to share part of it with the society as a whole, and this is why I am happy about my level of taxes, compared to the services provided.

There are wastes? Of course there are! So many! But the solution to "governments waste money" is not "less money to the governments", is "more accountability".

This is of course my view of the world, but I still haven't found anybody that explains why my job deserves to be in the top 5% earner in my country, apart from being just a consequence of the fact that my job scales to billions of users due its very nature (that is completely inconsequential from the choices I have made), while other jobs have physical limits and they don't scale.

On a practical level you probably did work/study harder, do something more special, had more resources, been luckier than the vast majority of the population; that's why you're in the position you occupy.

On a more ideological level it feels like you're looking for some sort of moral or "greater truth" behind the economics, but I'm not sure it's there. You've shared your personal beliefs and motivations, and seem to have lots of conviction to guide yourself, so why ask someone else to convince you there's a deeper cause? Just use your results to act how YOU want to impact the outcomes of others.

>Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

I don't think any other (widely popular) work occupies so much of a one's mind as software engineering.

Because we are the gateway to exponential free work. Program once, run on x machines, supply all 8 billions with a service, for defacto nothing. From these hands flows cornucopia..

Just because the nano machinery is invisible, doesent mean it cant spin great things from nothing. Half the giants you see today, were nothing one generation ago.

Not OP but I think if you're gonna earn an average salary then tech is a pretty bad choice due to the constant shifting base of knowledge, lack of security (dot com type bubbles) and ageism prevalent in the industry. Being something like a government worker or teacher makes much more sense then. And unsurprisingly, in Europe a huge part of GDP is created by the government. Software developer roles in Europe are dominated by immigrants for much of the same reason - locals don't see these jobs as such a lucrative career path.

> Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe ?

Above average investments (time , effort & money) have a natural feeling of entitlement for above average returns.

Cost of getting an engineering degree of value is nowhere near any "average" degree.

Recent years have driven the median cost up and the median returns down. Hence the laments about "college is not worth it"

The average Joe in the US earns $60-70k, same as an average software engineer in the EU.

The difference is not that US workers earn more on average, but that being an engineer doesn’t make you automatically rich in Europe like it does in tbe USA.

I agree with your point about Europe squandering engineering talent.

Overall, it's a trade-off, though. You are right about the US opportunities, but there are downsides, too:

- crime (you get crime everywhere, but the US has a particularly and unnecessarily high level of serious crime like gun crime - e.g. school shootings happen pretty regularly);

- not everyone has good healthcare & social services (I am aware you will not personally be exposed to that, as you will have private healthcare; but it even bothers me if people around me are ill and cannot afford to get cured. I don't want to live somewhere where I can get a regular check at the Mayo clinic and my neighbor cannot afford their emergency dentist);

- low average education level (people generally don't know much of the world, history, literature).

- cultural life (theater, classical music etc.) is very uneven distributed.

Also, US taxation isn't that low in general, it dramatically depends on the state you live in (TX 0% state tax versus NY, MN etc. >40%).

There are places in Europe that have small tax rates (CH, LU), but they are not the best places to live for everybody. Everyone needs to weigh their priorities and match with the overall "package" (e.g. Canada is a good compromise: near-US salaries but Europe-like education of the general public) - and in any case, not everyone is free to leave where they currently reside.

Austria in particular has rather low salaries (but also low rents) - but places like Vienna have a magic feel to it that just doesn't exist on other continents. In comparison, in neighboring Switzerland are very high (anyone with a tech Master's degree would be on a six digits salary), but with a huge salary gap between locals and expats for doing the same job.

(I have lived in the UK, US, CH and DE.)

All the problems you listed as US-specific problems exist in my corner of Europe too, except gun violence. And on top of that we have fewer jobs, lower salaries, higher taxes and high unemployment.

I love Europe: its history, its music, its art, its architecture, its legacy - yes! the good and the bad -, its food, its cultures. But from my point of view we are killing ourselves, choked in an endless decay, metastasizing bureaucracy, and never-ending hopelessness.

I'm sure the Nordic Country are happy though, and that's the problem: American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best of our continent.

> American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best

Everyone does that. There seems to be a type of bragging that works by emphasizing how much more dangerous one's own country/state/town/village is than someone else's.

I'll be lucky if I can afford a single family home after 20 years of software engineering in the US. halfway there now, we'll see. Moving to a senior position has helped but I feel like a lot of people forget that the compensation in SV is not normal in other places.

SV is an outlier in both income and housing costs.

Here in DC metro, a mid-career developer should be able to afford a home without much trouble. Many of the best jobs are well outside the city (Tysons to Ashburn corridor) where housing costs aren’t terrible.

I feel like this is somewhat misguided

> and so o I've been happily living a workaholics' lifestyle since.

That is one key aspect. I'm not a workaholic and most other people aren't either. I do somewhat enjoy my work, but I work to pay for my live, not the other way around. I make a decent salary and work 35h/week with 36 days of vacation. I do pay a lot of taxes, but I live in a city with pretty good and affordable public transit, I got my university education for free (okay, I admit, I paid a total of 600€ for my bachelors), etc.

In a well governed country, you don't only pay taxes but also receive something in return.

> work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!

This isn't necessarily a result of high taxes, its also a result of Europe being much denser populated than the US (or Australia), limiting the supply side for construction land. The kind of the construction also plays a role, the average newly built European home is substantially more solidly constructed than the reference in the US.

> hence pushing for ever fewer work hours or even days because what else is there if your salary is essentially capped

Have you ever considered that many people would much rather have more free time than more money? Beyond a certain level, increased income doesn't correlate with increased happiness/wellbeing. Where this level is certainly depends, but it is much lower than many people anticipate.

Not all of Europe runs on a 50% tax rate though. My tax rate as company director in the United Kingdom is somewhere around 25%, and I can afford higher salaries than the rest of Europe while still enjoying the basic safety net of public health care.

But I'm originally from Italy, and the tax rate is exorbitant down there as well, with ridiculously low salaries.

You do you, but there is more to life than gross income from your employer. This is why I'd rather stay in this continent.

>work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!

If you're lucky. The salaries in my country are so abysmal that nobody in my generation can buy a house: the only one with houses inherited them or have rich parents.

>You'd have to be an idiot to want to work hard given how raw of a deal you are getting

Yeah sorry I can't fly to another country because I'm not satisfied with -only- a family home.

I looked up taxation in Norway, it looks very similar to ours. Personal marginal tax rates cap at 48% and corporate taxes are 23%. What am I missing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway

It has nothing to do with taxation - or else the Arab Gulf or Cayman Islands would be entrepreneurial hubs, not California or the Toronto area. It’s all about the price of quality labour. It’s about access to long-term risk capital (aka venture funds) + high quality labour at affordable prices. As in, entrepreneurs having cash to fund projects and being able to actually hire people that will help build them. Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway: your hourly cost would probably blow up. The low-tax destinations are the place billionaires go to park their wealth, not create it (for example, outside of Tech Nordic billionaires move to Switzerland after they get rich)

Also you get really great engineers in norway, something about the lack of light, cold, snowy eternal night, produces excellent devs. Lots of fantastic open source projects exist due to the vikings no longer using boats..

> Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway: your hourly cost would probably blow up.

Depends what you’re comparing to. Total comp for great engineers in Oslo is lower than for their peers in Silicon Valley.

Total cost to the company may not be. Employees are costlier to the companies in Europe.

>" Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway"

They're not particularly cheap in the US either. Toronto might be better but hi-tech salaries are going up as well.

You can get 100s of SWE in Poland (or Ukraine pre-war) way cheaper than US, yet extreme cases of tech startups like FAANGs will never happen because market is too small.

You need to look at the entire spectrum of direct, indirect and near-taxes. A couple of examples: VAT of 15-25% on almost everything. With social security contributions a maximum marginal tax rate on labour of more than 50%. Norway is actually pretty efficient and by far the best of the region compared with other countries but also massively subsidized with north sea oil money.

You’re missing the wealth tax. 1.1% of global wealth, including unrealized gains of startup share positions.

https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/wealth-tax/

I know a lot of founders whose companies are allegedly worth a lot on paper, but cash on hand is very limited.

I wonder how the wealth tax actually works. Do I want people to invest in my company if that's just going to increase the valuation and my tax bill? Surely there must be some exceptions...

This year, quite many have actually chosen to move from Norway to Switzerland, probably due to taxes

Not a problem for a startup surely, they have debts not wealth.

The US is prized because of its large market… not because it’s a tax dodge. The US dan cut off access to any company unwilling to pay local taxes just like how China forces any foreign company wanting to tap into its large market to give majority control to a local entity.

The US is absolutely a tax dodge because of low capital gains taxes and low corporate tax rates.

Marginal personal income tax rates, which is what others keep comparing here, are only relevant for wage earners.

It's all relative isn't it? Singapore is a tax dodge, but I would't characterize low corporate income taxes as a tax dodge. How does one get money out of a corporation if not via marginal personal income tax rates?

Long term capital gains.

Can you elaborate?

The EU is a large market too but startup founders aren't going there.

EU has a market on legislative base, however in language, culture, ... it is split. It is very hard to build a company serving larger parts of Europe.

Many American companies have done it. Instagram is very popular across the EU.

They started with an American focus, holding doors open for others and once things were running expanded more actively. Also they were acquired after 1.5 years when not even having a Android app, which is more spread in Europe than US compared to iphone

"Consumer tech" like social media. And the reason is 30+ different smaller markets, because this business makes little sense if you can't capture 100s of millions of users.

...and lots of other factors, like access to risk capital.

Please go file your taxes in 37 different countries with different regulations where your customers are.

You will bankrupt from your accountants’ bills.

the UK (used) to have a reasonably comprehensive welfare net, and has a larger number of companies per capita compared to the USA.

One of the things that are never really discussed in these kind of things is that you are already paying for welfare, its just not even. Poverty leads to crime, which costs you, either in lost property, crap neighbourhoods, or in insurance.

This comment distorts what is happening by using the word "robbing". Why not "supporting"?

Perhaps Peter has earned his cash by working really hard. But perhaps not, perhaps he just exploited other people to hustle his way up some corporate food chain.

This type of thinking is pure toxin because it essentially reinforces exactly what you don't want.

If Peter did in fact work hard and now he's stripped of the results of his labor while being told that probably he only managed to accumulate capital because he was just exploiting others, what incentive landscape does that create.

Is a lot of profit a function of factors much less commendable than creating value for others? Sure. But by lumping in the productive people with the parasites, you are undermining those people who deserve your protection the most.

Pure toxin is a bit harsh, no?

I can tell you what kind of incentives such a system promotes: different ones!

In particularly a welfare system gives incentives to people who want to create something out of intrinsic motivation, not because of financial motivation. Many of the things the most profitable companies use are actually but on tools and mathematics that were created without any financial freedom.

So I would rather reserve the word "toxic" rather for the current system consisting of purely financial motivation to hoard money that your are so vigorously defending.

Nobody anywhere gets very wealthy just by working hard. Otherwise the world would be filled with millionaire janitors.

> if you're using the excess to make yourself more money, rather than help improve other people's lives, you are being selfish at a level that makes you effectively indistinguishable from evil.

If you're using your business to create value for millions of people, you are in fact improving millions of lives by the amount of value created. If you capture a little bit of that value for yourself and become fantastically rich, good for you and good for the system that enabled this whole thing. Even better for you if you decide to give some of it away, but to call you evil if you don't? I suppose your own belt could be tightened a bit more so that you could give more away?

Other than what arises from rent-seeking behavior, profit is not inherently immoral.

If you use your business to make life easier for millions of people, that's good.

If you take enough profit to make billions of dollars for yourself, that's bad.

Because no one person (or family) can ever realize anything resembling a proportionate benefit from that money, all you're doing is raising your dollar-denominated high score, at the expense of all the other people you could be helping more if you invested that money back in your business, or paid it in taxes, or invested in other local businesses, or any of a thousand other ways to make it work for the world instead of just being a selfish Number Go Up for you.

When someone becomes rich through this path, they aren't rolling around with a billion dollars in a vault Scrooge McDuck style. Almost all of their wealth that isn't taxed is already tied in their own business or in investments in other businesses, so they're already doing the things that you say will make it work for the world. Even the little bit of liquid money they keep in the bank is loaned out to other profit-seeking entrepreneurs.

Once again, profit is not immoral. It serves as an important signal for capital to be directed in the value-creation cycle that ends up producing wealth for everyone. In the words of Isabel Paterson: "Production is profit; and profit is production. They are not merely related; they are the same thing. When a man plants potatoes, if he does not get back more than he put in, he has produced nothing."

You are saying that if a man who planted potatoes harvests them and keeps some for himself above and beyond what he needs to subsist, he is evil. I'm really not sure how you justify that position.

> You are saying that if a man who planted potatoes harvests them and keeps some for himself above and beyond what he needs to subsist, he is evil. I'm really not sure how you justify that position.

I don't, because that's not what I'm saying.

If you actually read my post, I did not say that taking any profit was evil. I said taking enough profit to make you a billionaire was evil.

The scale of what it takes to become a billionaire is absolutely mind-boggling. I might, if I am lucky, make enough in my lifetime to have a million dollars saved up.

I would have to work a thousand of those lifetimes to get a billion dollars.

And yes; someone who is a billionaire keeps that money in stocks and things, and it's true that it's not just a pile of cash...but that doesn't actually mean that it's usefully "in the economy". It's still theirs. (And remember, unless you buy it as part of a direct issuance from the company, buying stock doesn't actually put more money in their pocket.)

Peter Thiel is a really good example of using a loophole in law, to make fantastic wealth using his Roth account.

Full story here: https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...

1. Finland doesn't have oil, you're mistaking it for Norway.

2. Progressive taxation is the basis on which the best places to live were built. This is an empirical observation, make of that what you will, but it's strange to give your gut feelings of "basic economics / human nature" more weight than objective reality.

3. Why do is the word "rob" applied to taxation? Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation. Your current life is only possible because you are inserted in a society, it's only far you have a debt to pay society back.

> Your current life is only possible because you are inserted in a society, it's only far you have a debt to pay society back.

Sure, but at some point it starts to sound abusive, like a narcissistic parent telling their child that they and not the little child owns their accomplishments, because without them the child would not have existed.

The state, at least in the US, is supposed to work for you, the people. The burden of proof is on the state if it wants to tax more and expand itself. It needs to justify every penny of the taxpayer's money it spends. It simply cannot take the position that everyone's output is by default a debt owed to it, and by its grace alone are the people allowed to keep some of it. That's the talk of the divine right of kings.

>!Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation.

This is the kind of minimalist state that libertarians would agree to. People talk about robbery when the state is spending money on arbitrary things.

Arbitrary? Or just things they don't agree with?

Arbitrary in the sense of non-essential things that governments spend other people’s money on.

The fact that most people don’t agree is why tax is taken by force.