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no substitute for a good safety net and parental support you don't need parental support if you live in a country that actually has a decent social safety net.
by em-bee 3y ago
no substitute for a good safety net and parental support
you don't need parental support if you live in a country that actually has a decent social safety net.
my parents were/are poor. once i moved out i never needed any money from them. however when i was a child we had to live from social services. and that was enough for us to have what we needed.
that safety net gave me the same feeling of security that your friends got from their family. i was able to travel the world from money i earned myself. i took jobs and contracts wherever i wanted, because i knew, if all else fails i can go back to my home country. (edited to clarify)
and even though many people complain how social support is not enough to live on, i have learned to live frugally, and i know that it would be enough for me.
i know that, no matter how bad things could get, i'll never have to sleep under a bridge.
as a society, that should be a minimum standard to aim for. seeing how cities in the US deal with homelessness leaves me dumbfounded. how can a society allow that to happen? it absolutely makes no sense to me. you really need to fix that.
- bodiekane 3y agoIf that was true, then shouldn't Norway, Denmark and France be where all the exciting moonshot startups are founded? Instead, it's the US and China where essentially all innovation and major risk-taking is happening. Empirically, there must be some other critical variables your hypothesis is leaving out to explain what we see in reality.
- em-bee 3y agogood point, and yes, there are other variables. a big one is risk tolerance. america was built by immigrants who all took a great risk getting there (with apologies to the native americans who were there first), so given equal conditions, a lot more people in america are willing to experiment. as one consequence americans also have more rolemodels of successful risk-takers. pretty much elsewhere in the world (at least western and asian countries that i have been to) taking a risk is considered something bad. the hackerspace in singapure has a sign that says: "this is singapures only kiasu free zone". kiasu means "extreme fear of losing", something prevalent in asian culture. european culture is better in that regard, but not much. so yeah, despite the benefits, most people in europe are afraid to try. also, as i mentioned, at least in germany people are complaining that the support is not enough. they didn't have the experience to see the system working like i did. i am willing to take a risk because i have already experienced what will happen when i fail. most people don't have that advantage. also, because of the lower risk tolerance it is much harder for startups in europe to get money. there are few investors and banks will only give you a credit if you have a proven business model. most rich people in europe are rich because their families had been rich for centuries. it's almost all old money.
- exe34 3y ago> you don't need parental support if you live in a country that actually has a decent social safety net. [...] > if all else fails i can go back home So do you need the parental support or not?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> i was able to travel the world from money i earned myself ... if all else fails i can go back home It sounds like "not"; that their support was the system of people governing their home country.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoI think he was referring to his home country, with the strong safety nets?
- exe34 3y agoAhh that makes more sense!