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A cry for Europe (freddestin.com)
9 points by arihelgason on March 17, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



I liked this post in the comments:

A couple of weeks ago I lectured in front of a classroom (in Belgium). I never prepare these things because I – naively – assume that the audience will want to know how it is to run a tech. start-up, like for instance Nomadesk.

So I asked: “What do you want to find out about staring up a business?”... no response! Ok, I reverted to my fallback question: “Who of you has thought about starting a business, sometime in the future?” Dead silence, absolutely no response!?

At that point I got concerned, because I would only be able to entertain this lot (during 90min.), if they’d provoke me with their questioning.

So, I finally asked why they were not interested in starting up a business. At that point a young lady raised her hand – she was not older than 18: “Because, you hardly get any retirement fee”…

I rest my case,


This is straight scary. I've lived in Spain, UK and Germany (after being in the US for 4 years) and the contrast is ... astounding. Most young people here do want to be civil servants.




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