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As an expat living in Sweden, this sounds spot on. You can easily live very comfortably in here, and it's very seducing. Not the best place if you hold any ambi

As an expat living in Sweden, this sounds spot on. You can easily live very comfortably in here, and it's very seducing. Not the best place if you hold any ambitions of world domination though, which is why I'm moving to the US as soon as possible. I wouldn't agree with the author's sentiment: "The reason why I decided to stay here in the United States, despite a couple of efforts to return to Finland, is because I like it when people smile, laugh, and, yes, even talk to their neighbors." My Swedish neighbours and Swedes in general have been delightful, though I know things may be different in Finland. I think it's great that places like Sweden exist, and might suit most people, but those who wish to lead lives of high variance with high highs at the cost of potentially ruinous lows should be able to do so as well.

eCa 5y ago
> Not the best place if you hold any ambitions of world domination though Does seem to have worked fairly well for Ikea, Spotify and some others though.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  Not to mention pop music. Swedes have been extremely talented at marketing Swedish culture abroad.
- ochrist 5y ago
  There are a few ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Nordic_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Nordic_compani...
blululu 5y ago
For what it’s worth, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires#Forbes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...). It’s just harder to spot because there’s less contrast.
- ObserverNeutral 5y ago
  It's not about your own wealth, it's about the size of the company you are at the helm of. People understand the diminishing returns of wealth, they'd rather be at the helm of a Fortune 100 company and have a net wealth of 100m vs. being a billionaire who made his billion buying and selling real estate in Sweden. Sweden billionaires are all small potatos guys, they are way inferior to Trump if we are talking about turnover of the companies they own. The US has the real guys, people like Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch etc.
- toxik 5y ago
  Billionaires per capita I think is a pretty terrible way to describe the situation. 25% of all billionaires live in the US, same for China. 1.4% live in Sweden.
  - blululu 5y ago
    Not sure I’m understanding this objection. The parameter in question is ability of a society to generate extreme outliers in achievement. In economic $billion net worth is a good proxy, though I’m sure we could look at things like publication citation rank or number of gold medals instead. We would certainly want to scale whatever number by the size of a country since that corresponds to the probability that a given individual in that society can achieve that level of success. Comparing the US to China, for example, in total magnitude will naturally bias to China since it has 4x the population. That means that although both societies have a similar number of billionaires the probability of being a billionaire in the US is ~4x greater.
guerrilla 5y ago
As an expat living in Sweden, I have the opposite experience. Did you by any chance work in a big corporation like Ericsson? Then I can see why you'd think that. Startup culture was the opposite though. Other comments here also give a lot of evidence to the contrary.

eCa 5y ago

> Not the best place if you hold any ambitions of world domination though Does seem to have worked fairly well for Ikea, Spotify and some others though.

KozmoNau7 5y ago
Not to mention pop music. Swedes have been extremely talented at marketing Swedish culture abroad.
ochrist 5y ago
There are a few ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Nordic_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Nordic_compani...

blululu 5y ago

For what it’s worth, Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires#Forbes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...). It’s just harder to spot because there’s less contrast.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago
It's not about your own wealth, it's about the size of the company you are at the helm of. People understand the diminishing returns of wealth, they'd rather be at the helm of a Fortune 100 company and have a net wealth of 100m vs. being a billionaire who made his billion buying and selling real estate in Sweden. Sweden billionaires are all small potatos guys, they are way inferior to Trump if we are talking about turnover of the companies they own. The US has the real guys, people like Bezos, Gates, Buffett, Koch etc.
toxik 5y ago
Billionaires per capita I think is a pretty terrible way to describe the situation. 25% of all billionaires live in the US, same for China. 1.4% live in Sweden.
- blululu 5y ago
  Not sure I’m understanding this objection. The parameter in question is ability of a society to generate extreme outliers in achievement. In economic $billion net worth is a good proxy, though I’m sure we could look at things like publication citation rank or number of gold medals instead. We would certainly want to scale whatever number by the size of a country since that corresponds to the probability that a given individual in that society can achieve that level of success. Comparing the US to China, for example, in total magnitude will naturally bias to China since it has 4x the population. That means that although both societies have a similar number of billionaires the probability of being a billionaire in the US is ~4x greater.

guerrilla 5y ago

As an expat living in Sweden, I have the opposite experience. Did you by any chance work in a big corporation like Ericsson? Then I can see why you'd think that. Startup culture was the opposite though. Other comments here also give a lot of evidence to the contrary.