
In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism - michael_dorfman
http://m.inc.com/run_biz/16850/
======
zdw
If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

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

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

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

~~~
bobo99
But if you have less to win, why should you take risks anyway?

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

~~~
rick888
"Speaking as one who has started several start-ups in Norway, I'd say: there
is still quite a bit to win, there is much less risk, and at the end of the
day, we're not really in it for the money, are we?"

That last part makes me think that you aren't really making that much and
justifying it by saying: "we're not really in it for the money, are we?".

Everyone is in it for the money. Money means freedom. Freedom from governments
and your boss. If you aren't in it for the money, start a non-profit.

Here is a list of the largest 500 companies in Norway (with gross and net
revenue):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_companies_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_companies_of_Norway)

Those numbers look pitiful (I'm not sure what the actual dollar amounts are,
but I'm just comparing them based on percentages). Having health insurance to
fall back on does help with starting a company. But once you get the company
established, the amount of taxes you will be required to pay for employees and
other things will outweigh any benefits you received initially.

~~~
stevenbedrick
> Everyone is in it for the money. Money means freedom. Freedom from
> governments and your boss.

No, everybody is _not_ "in it for the money". You said it yourself, actually:
most people are in it for the things that money allows them to do. That is a
very important difference, and it's one that a lot of people forget about.

Here in the US, a lot of the things from which we'd like to be "free" from
(living in fear of health care-related bankruptcy, having to beg a boss for an
extra week of vacation, being limited to absurdly short and unpaid
(ma|pa)ternity leave periods, etc.) come with a hefty price tag, and as such
are associated with (and often thought of as proxies for) having a lot of
money.

In a place like Norway, many of the things that that we Americans see as perks
afforded to only the wealthiest of individuals are instead thought of as
baseline facts of life.

Is it so surprising, then, that people whose world-views are shaped by such a
system don't have the same difficulties at disentangling financial cause and
effect that we Americans have? They say that "past a certain point, money's
just a way of keeping score," and it sounds to me as though that point is a
lot lower in a place like Norway than it is here in the US.

As an experiment, let's try formulating it (semi)-logically (it's been a while
since I had logic, so if I'm getting this wrong, please let me know):

    
    
        if (has lots of money) -> (freedom from financial catastrophe, and lots of social perks)
    

In the US, the inverse is true:

    
    
        not (has lots of money) -> not (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks, etc.)
    

Because of how our system is set up, the converse is also typically true:

    
    
        if (freedom from financial catastrophe, lots of social perks) -> (has lots of money)
    

This leads us to conclude that there's an inevitable relationship between
having lots of money and having the freedom that you talk about.

In Norway, however, the system is different, and it doesn't sound like the
aforementioned inverse relationship between money and freedom is true: since
you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe, a
decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons of
money. Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians
have arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?

~~~
rick888
"No, everybody is not "in it for the money". You said it yourself, actually:
most people are in it for the things that money allows them to do. That is a
very important difference, and it's one that a lot of people forget about."

You need money though. So directly or indirectly, money is always a factor.

"since you can have the freedom from healthcare-related financial catastrophe,
a decent vacation policy, educational benefits, etc. all without having tons
of money."

Well, you had that money, it just went to the government instead of your
pocket. The choices you could have made with that money are now gone. Once you
are an established company in the US, you could afford those benefits yourself
(which is more efficient because rather than paying for all healthcare, you
can figure out what will work for your company).

For many non-web related business, it will make it that much more difficult.
If you need to spend money on physical goods and your profit margin is razor
thin, huge taxes aren't going to make it easier. If you have a business that
doesn't scale well with one person (IE: a tech business where you need to hire
more employees quickly), the increased employee taxes and requirements might
make it an impossibility to continue (if you have no funding).

So, it might help with web businesses that can scale well with one employee or
ones that are funded by VC. I wonder how many people are actually
bootstrapping a company there.

"Since there are different "givens", it's not surprising that Norwegians have
arrived at different conclusions and attitudes towards money. QED?"

Norwegians now have a sense of entitlement. It all depends on what you want.
If you want an easier start, but have your overall potential income limited,
start a company in Norway. If you want a riskier start, with less limits in
the long-run, start your company in the US.

I still have to wonder. If this was such a great system, why aren't more
people starting companies? There is no risk, right? Why isn't Norway the
center for startups?

~~~
stevenbedrick
> Norwegians now have a sense of entitlement.

You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a
"sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning
emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one
could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the
sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens
(in exchange for taxes, etc.).

It sounds like Norwegians have a different idea of where that baseline should
be.

> It all depends on what you want. If you want an easier start, but have your
> overall potential income limited, start a company in Norway. If you want a
> riskier start, with less limits in the long-run, start your company in the
> US.

OK, fair enough, but again- remember _why_ it is that you care one way or the
other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point
where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants
satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there
a point to accumulating more than that? From the article, and from what other
posters on this thread have said, it sure sounds like the "limited" potential
income level in Norway is still quite high, by any rational standard, so what
does it matter? After five or six million dollars per year, would an increase
actually impact your life in a noticeable way?

By the way, I'm speaking from a strictly pragmatic standpoint here, not an
idealogical one- some people see this as a moral issue, and that's not where
I'm going here. I'm basically saying, "if my income is X millions of dollars,
why do I care if the government takes half of that and I only have .5X?"
Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my
neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be
able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more?
And if you do, will it make you happy?

Of course, I should point out that this is all very easy for me to say, seeing
as I never have and probably never will earn enough to face this question
personally. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were rich, who knows.

~~~
rick888
"You say that like it's a bad thing. One could say that us Americans have a
"sense of entitlement" about things like clean drinking water, functioning
emergency services, and a publicly-funded education system; alternatively, one
could just as easily say that we have a set of baseline expectations about the
sorts of things that a modern society is supposed to provide to its citizens
(in exchange for taxes, etc.)."

Having basics is a good thing (clean drinking water, police/fire). Too many of
these things means there is less freedom for the people putting money into the
system and less incentive for the people utilizing these services to get a
job. There needs to be a balance. Too little or too much is a bad thing.

"OK, fair enough, but again- remember why it is that you care one way or the
other about how big your "overall potential income" is. There comes a point
where you've got enough to live luxuriously, have all your material wants
satisfied, and basically do whatever you want on a day-to-day basis- is there
a point to accumulating more than that?"

Like I said, it's not just me. With more money, I can help friends, family,
and anyone else I choose. I don't want the government deciding what do do with
my money. I also enjoy the freedom. It's something you seem to have trouble
understanding.

"From the article, and from what other posters on this thread have said, it
sure sounds like the "limited" potential income level in Norway is still quite
high, by any rational standard, so what does it matter? After five or six
million dollars per year, would an increase actually impact your life in a
noticeable way?"

Why does it matter to you? It's my money. 5 or 6 million per year really isn't
that much anymore.

If I am limited to this, I probably would just keep the money in a bank.
Otherwise, I might try to invest in other businesses and or start another one.
One leads to more jobs and an improved economy and the other doesn't.

"Especially since I know that, by giving up that money, I'm ensuring that my
neighbors and employees don't have to worry about medical costs and will be
able to retire comfortably? Past a certain point, can you really spend more?
And if you do, will it make you happy?"

The US already has Medicade and Medicare. Over 70% of people are covered in
some way or another by their employer.

You haven't talked about the negative effects of a socialized healthcare
system and you are trying to use sympathy to get me to agree with you.
Healthcare is a finite resource. We need some way to limit usage. There needs
to be a hybrid system in place that limits total visits per year (and charges
fees after that) or it will eventually collapse. Unlimited anything is a bad
idea.

I also think that people that engage in risky behaviors (smoking, drug use,
etc) should have more money taken out in taxes. It's not really fair that I, a
person that doesn't engage in that behavior, has to pay for your poor life
choices.

~~~
stevenbedrick
> Having basics is a good thing (clean drinking water, police/fire). Too many
> of these things means there is less freedom for the people putting money
> into the system and less incentive for the people utilizing these services
> to get a job. There needs to be a balance. Too little or too much is a bad
> thing.

I agree with you 100%. I also think that it's an area that people (and
countries) can and do have reasonable disagreements regarding where that
balance point should be.

> I also enjoy the freedom. It's something you seem to have trouble
> understanding.

No, believe me, I understand; I think that you and I place different value on
that level of freedom. For me, the freedom isn't _necessarily_ an end in and
of itself- it's one of many different means to an end. In other words, the
freedom isn't valuable; it's what that freedom allows us to _do_ , and how it
allows us to live our lives, that's important.

Furthermore, I think of freedom as a vector, not a scalar- there are multiple
dimensions to it. Simply talking about "more" or "less" freedom isn't very
meaningful. Sometimes, trading one kind of freedom for another makes sense.
For example, I generally try and follow traffic laws when driving. This is a
constraint on my freedom to drive as fast as I want, wherever I want. However,
by accepting this constraint, I experience a net gain in total freedom (i.e.,
the magnitude of my freedom vector increases overall), since by buying into
the system of traffic laws, I get to enjoy a traffic and road system that lets
us all have cars and use them to go wherever we want to go without having to
worry (too much) about somebody driving the wrong way down our lane of
traffic, and so on. I value that quite a bit- enough to follow rules that are
sometimes suboptimal, or downright annoying.

Personally, I would feel a lot more free and happy if I knew that my friends
all had health insurance, and there have been times in my life when it would
have been very nice to be able to find a different job without worrying about
what the effects would be on my partner's access to health care. I also feel
like the overall societal benefits to _everybody's_ friends having health
insurance and what-not would result in a net increase in the magnitude of my
personal freedom vector, to the extent that I'm willing to accept a hit to one
or another of my vector's dimensions in terms of paying higher taxes, etc..
Obviously, you disagree with me on this count, and that's fine- but let's make
sure we understand precisely what it is that we're disagreeing about.

It seems to me that one way to think about our difference of opinion is that,
when you and I calculate the magnitude our freedom vector, we're placing
different weights on the various dimensions--- in other words, some dimensions
are more important to you than others. Heck, we might even be calculating our
freedom vectors in entirely different spaces- our dimensions themselves might
be different, which would make it very hard to compare how you think about and
value these things to how I think about and value them. Can you tell I'm in
the final throes of dissertation writing? :-)

> Why does it matter to you? It's my money. 5 or 6 million per year really
> isn't that much anymore.

Well, it actually doesn't matter to me personally; I just have a hard time
getting my head around the concept that, past that point, another million
would have any net effect on my personal happiness level. However, as I said
before, this could totally be an artifact of the fact that I'm not in that
position. Maybe if I were, I'd feel differently. Note that the exact amount
isn't really so important- just the idea that there's a point past which it
doesn't matter. Maybe the real point is 10 million, maybe it's only 1 or 2.
Obviously, it'll be different for everybody, but I don't think it'll differ by
all that much, once all is said and done.

BTW, I disagree that 5 or 6 million/year "isn't that much anymore." First of
all, in most of the world, that's such a fantastical amount that you might as
well as be talking about being paid in unicorn horns; however, we're not
talking about living in Botswana- we're talking about living somewhere like
the US. So, here in the US, 5/6 m/year is way more than enough to live in
incredibly decadent luxury in any city in the country. I suppose it might not
enough to actually own and operate a private jet, but it's certainly enough
for NetJets; it's probably not enough to buy one's own island, but short of
that sort of thing, I'm having a hard time imagining something I'd like to do
that I couldn't do easily on that kind of income.[1] Again, maybe my
imagination is too limited, here, but I kind of don't think so- I've certainly
got a taste for creature comforts, and enjoy luxuries as much as anybody else.
Remember, I'm not saying that people shouldn't earn tons of money- just that,
after a point, what does it matter? And, if it doesn't matter, why not use it
supporting a system that efficiently makes life comfortable for people that
don't have as much as you do?

> The US already has Medicade and Medicare. Over 70% of people are covered in
> some way or another by their employer.

First of all, that still leaves 30% of the country that isn't covered, which
is way too damn many. Second of all, what most people call "Medicaid" is
actually a patchwork of different programs that vary widely in terms of
coverage requirements and services from state to state, and is far from an
ideal system, although it is better than nothing. As to the fact that most
people who are covered are covered through their employers, doesn't that
strike you as a major dent in their freedom? How many potential entrepreneurs
do you think don't bother simply because they can't risk losing their (or
their family's) health insurance? In my mind, this represents a major hit to
personal liberty, and as such seems like exactly the sort of thing that a
system intent on maximizing individual freedom would be attempting to fix.

> You haven't talked about the negative effects of a socialized healthcare
> system and you are trying to use sympathy to get me to agree with you.

Well, I haven't talked about it, because I didn't see it as relevant to the
discussion- most of the rest of the world's countries employ some form of
government-funded universal healthcare, and even though there certainly are
negatives, I gotta say- I've traveled a fair bit, and due to my work, wherever
I go I end up talking to people about healthcare. I've never- not once- heard
somebody tell me that they'd rather have the US's system than their own
country's, even if they've spent the last half-hour enumerating their system's
problems. That says something, in my mind. Furthermore, there are a lot of
different kinds of "socialized healthcare systems." Some of them have usage
limits, etc.; some are surprisingly market-driven (e.g., Switzerland). That's
not really what we're talking about, though. No system is going to be perfect;
the question is whether a government-run system that guarantees a certain
level of coverage to all citizens would be better or worse than our current
system (or lack of system).

> Healthcare is a finite resource. We need some way to limit usage. There
> needs to be a hybrid system in place that limits total visits per year (and
> charges fees after that) or it will eventually collapse. Unlimited anything
> is a bad idea.

All 100% true points. "Rationing" is a really dirty word when it comes to
health care, but it's an absolute necessity, if for no other reason than
resources are ultimately finite. Right now, one of the ways we limit usage is
by limiting access, which I personally view as unjust. If everybody had equal
access, maybe we could figure out a better way (not bloody likely, IMHO, but
it can't be worse than what we've got now). Note that I'm personally extremely
pessimistic about health care in the US, even if we somehow were able to get a
better system into place, but I don't think that means that we shouldn't try.

At any rate, this is all kind of off-topic from our original discussion.

[1]: Exception: massive-scale philanthropy, along the lines of the Gates
Foundation.

------
ThomPete
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

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

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

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

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

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

They have a big ass market and one language.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Private financing for computer startups is nonexistent._

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

~~~
marvin
What sort of startups/work have you been doing? When I'm talking about
disincentivizing, I just mean that making the conscious decision of working
more seems like a no-brainer. Your personal reasoning behind this may be
different, but overall, fewer people will do this if they only get paid for
70-80% of the extra hours than if they get paid for all of them.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Really? You think there is a linear relationship between tax rates and hours
worked? It's never worked that way in my experience, either as an employee or
as a founder.

As an owner, you don't get paid for hours, full-stop. You get paid for
outcomes. I don't know about you, but if the government raised the corporate
tax rate by 5%, that would have no bearing on my desire to have my company
succeed.

The same holds true, ceteris paribus, for my years as an employee. I worked
hard (and a lot of hours) because I enjoyed what I was doing, and wanted the
company to succeed, even if my income was divorced from the hours worked--as
it was, most of the time, as a salaried employee. In other words, I got paid
_zero_ percent of the "extra hours", and yet still worked them, gladly, for
other reasons.

Naturally, YMMV.

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

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

-

Reading this also reminded me of an interview I'd heard a few months ago:
[http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/29/pm-
zombie-economic-ideas-still-among-us/)

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both dials can be turned up at the same time.

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

------
cromulent
Norway is not a socialist country.

Social democracy != socialism.

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

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

~~~
tallanvor
Actually, I think the way the US and Norway handled the crisis helps to show
how different they are.

Norway stepped in much more quickly, even though the risk was much less
compared to the US (Norway had already placed stricter controls on banks due
to the crisis they had in the late 80's and early 90's). While the Fed did
step in in the US, they were more concerned with pumping in money rather than
trying to fix the underlying cause of the trouble - because, after all,
telling the banks what to do would be "socialism", which is why there is still
so much uncertainty in the US right now.

Obviously not everything in Norway is perfect, but taking everything into
account - the 3.1% unemployment rate just one example - I certainly have no
desire to move back to the US anytime soon.

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

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

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

~~~
dantheman
I'm not from norway, but here's a few articles I found in a minute of
searching:

* [http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/08/24/more-tax-trouble-for-...](http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/08/24/more-tax-trouble-for-the-government/) * [http://www.norwaypost.no/news/higher-taxes-for-many-pensione...](http://www.norwaypost.no/news/higher-taxes-for-many-pensioners.html)

I assume these don't represent the general view, but it does show that at
least some people in norway dislike the level of taxation.

~~~
michael_dorfman
I'm sure they exist-- I just haven't crossed paths with any, in 13 years here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
gaius
Norwegian examples simply aren't applicable to the rest of the world. Here in
the UK we are often compared to Norway, since we are both North Sea oil
countries. Well, Norway makes _20x_ the oil revenue per head of the population
than we do. That covers up a an awful lot. We don't have the luxury of
economic inefficiencies that Norway can get away with.

------
relic17
The article implies that most people in Norway believe that individual rights
are less important than the average welfare of all individuals taken together
and that personal lives are less important than the well-being of the
collective. This is quite logical, because it is the acceptance of this view
of the world that makes their system possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
relic17
Fundamentally, it comes down to the questions "Do you have the right to keep
the fruit of your effort? And do you have the right to dispose of it as you
see fit?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
hugh3
_The base definition of socialism is "worker ownership of the means of
production and distribution"._

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

~~~
michaelchisari
Not that simple, no. Profit-sharing is not the same as worker ownership, since
if shares are available to non-workers, then it's not a socialist system.
Also, if workers are required to "buy in" to shares, instead of collectively
owning the results of their economic organization, then that is not socialism
either.

What you're thinking of is still capitalism.

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

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-
amer...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-
health-care-killed-my-father/7617/)

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

"This is particularly surprising, because the prices Dalmo pays for government
services are among the highest in the world." >Of course, the country has some
of the highest wages in the world so nursing is naturally not as cheap as in
Nepal.

"The capitalist system functions well," Dalmo says. "But I'm a socialist in my
bones." > Let's put some context on this. Imagine a Norwegian magazine
travelling to Alabama, interviewing an entrepreneur who also happens to be a
Tea Party member. The point is that the vast majority of Norwegians do not
identify themselves as socialist in the American sense of the word. The word
lost its meaning in the late 70s, when labor sobered up and realized it needed
to export, since then Norway has had moderate European taxes.

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

"and where, in the most remote parts, one must be careful to avoid polar
bears." There are no wild polar bears in Norway. There are polar bears on
arctic island owned by Norway.

"The food isn't great." > The food in northern Europe isn't the most exciting.

"It ranked third in Gallup's latest global happiness survey" > Define
happiness. It's also the country in the world with one of the highest suicide
rates.

"Bear strikes, darkness, and whale meat notwithstanding, Norway is also an
exceedingly pleasant place to make a home." > Alligators, heat-waves, and
death-valley notwithstanding, the US is also an exceedingly pleasant place to
make a home.

"The unemployment rate, just 3.5 percent, is the lowest in Europe and one of
the lowest in the world." > Thanks to how Norway actually measures
unemployment, by declaring long-term unemployed people sick.

"There are no private schools in Norway" > Incorrect, there are many private
kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and private higher-eds in
Norway.

"The problem for entrepreneurship in Norway is it's so lucrative to be an
employee," says Lars Kolvereid, the lead researcher for the Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor in Norway." > I included this statement because it's
TRUE, and because I was delighted that the author finally decided to interview
an expert.

"Kenneth Winther, the founder of the Oslo management consultancy MoonWalk,
regaled me for hours about the virtues of Norway—security, good roads, good
schools." > Norway is a very safe country, but it has terrible roads and its
schools are mediocre at best.

So in summary, what's wrong with this article? Remember that assignment you
got in college, where you were supposed to pick a side in the abortion debate
and argue for that side? You pick a thesis and then you selectively cherry-
pick facts with the occasional intermittent concession to the opposite side as
a rhetorical device. The problem with this story isn't that it presents wrong
facts, it's that it presents a highly skewed picture of reality. In fact, this
is why I have stopped reading magazines like Time, Newsweek, Bloomberg
business review and last but not least Business Week. These days I only read
the Economist, which is the magazine that seems to care more about reality
than making a provocative point. Pick any story in the Economist and you'll
find that the ingress usually has the format "While event X may be positive Y,
it also may have a downside Z".

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
relic17
Very true. Many refuse to think logically and accept whatever happens to be
the fashionable idea of the day. My family and I also had to witness a similar
experiment. I join you in your wishes.

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

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

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

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

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

