Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaptheimpaler | Hacker News Reader

This article itself is a great case study. The implicit structure of this article is that Lynn got fired and became an entrepreneur because he was forced into it. They never asked him anything about what it would take to get more entrepreneurs or make his life as an entrepreneur easier.

Instead they asked 4 professors of entrepreneurship & govt. ministers who probably weren't entrepreneurs. These people mentioned twice that one of the reasons for low entrepreneurship is because unemployment is too low and jobs pay too well... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options..

What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment)

View on HN

This is what happens in a world where “experts” are merely those with “certifications at the expert level” and not people with actual knowledge and experience.

That kind of world is an inevitable outcome of large bureaucracies and over-reliance on qualifications. You don’t just get idiocracy, you get Untruths and policies oriented around expanding the bureaucracy rather than addressing problems. See also: Lysenkoism in the USSR, EU’s model of funding startups through grants.

I honestly think this one of the things the US does way, way better than other developed countries. We pay a price in cronyism and corruption, but we actually let industry experts with real experience both advise on policy and take key government positions. We don’t pretend you need a PhD in X to be knowledgeable about X to nearly the same extent as Canada and the Eu.

You can’t just stick a midwit in a university for 10 years and expect them to be anything other than a midwit, and you can’t expert an organization that values compliance and internal politics more than performance and effectiveness to produce performant or effective leaders. You can’t bureaucracy your way into a free market either.

A bunch of people with the wrong assumptions who don't understand the core mechanics of a situation surely won't improve things I agree with you on that. Calling them midwits with no prospects, on the other hand, says more about you than them.

There is nothing wrong per-se with being a midwit; most people are midwits and I never said they have “no prospects”.

What I take issue with is the kind of idiocracy you get when experts are identified according to “an uninformed person’s idea of an expert” rather than actual expertise. Bureaucracies’ ideas of expertise are usually “objective” like a degree or certification. The thing about degrees and certifications is that they are not nearly as difficult to get or indicative of knowledge/intelligence as an average person thinks they are. Especially with regard to more practical degrees like business and engineering, they simply cannot really teach you the same kinds of things you learn from actually working in the field.

As someone living in the EU, I can say your comparison between Lysenkoism and EU grants is fantastic.

Aye, I like to think of entrepreneurs as extreme investors. They are investing their time and effort in the expectation that there will be significant returns in the market.

The Canadian entrepreneur problem is the TSX problem: it's a struggle to convince oneself to invest in Canada, because generally the returns are lackluster. Rail, Banks, Oil and Gas are the consistent winners, all well-connected and deeply rooted, and rare is the startup that becomes a star on the TSX.

It's not that there isn't enough starving and unemployed talent, it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.

> it's that there's something about Canada that suffocates and debilitates small and medium companies.

On the face of it, Canada should be a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The country has full access to the US market, has a good standard of living, has capitalism with good social nets, has great rule of law, well educated residents, allows qualified immigrants...

Every major economy is aging. Surely this cannot be the answer why entrepreurship in Canada is down.

Also, I object to the metric of entrepreneurs as a percentage of population used in the article. It is about how many successful companies are being born. You could have a very high entrepreurship rate with a high failure rate or you could have a low entrepreneurship rate with a high success rate. At the end it is the product of the two i.e. sustainable, successful businesses born per year that is a better metric. We also need to take future profitability and future-impact into account. Giving birth to one OpenAI per year is arguably better than getting 100 new dry-cleaner businesses per-year.

The article could have been better.

Yes but, thinking about this:

Canada sells and sees itself as the good boys. The conformists. The least likely to rock the boat. The opposite of that Apple ad essentially

You can see that by how often they will go with proprietary solution, even for their startups/SMEs. "Oh why don't we do this in .NET" even when there are plenty of other solutions

They will only risk the water only when they see other people way down. I'd say even Europe is not that bad in that sense.

>"Oh why don't we do this in .NET" even when there are plenty of other solutions

That's an interesting idea for a metric: how many programming languages has Canada created relative to similarly sized countries?

Canada and Canadians are doing well here. You can start with Rust, PHP, and Java.

This is about Canada, not Canadians. Rust and Java were created in the USA down the road from each other in California, by people working for US companies.

Nobody is claiming there's some sort of genetic difference that causes different levels of entrepreneurship, it's clearly all cultural. Take the Canadian out of Canada, make them report to American bosses and clearly they can create popular new software, no different to Europeans or Indians or Chinese ... the differences therefore must be related to government policy and culture.

Rust was originally created in Canada, but your point is taken.

>it's clearly all cultural. Take the Canadian out of Canada, make them report to American bosses and clearly they can create popular new software, no different to Europeans or Indians or Chinese ... the differences therefore must be related to government policy and culture.

By default, most of the top-of-field Canadians work in the US because it's at least 50% more profitable (among other reasons).

I agree with the premise about culture generally but you can't attribute all of it to culture. A great deal can be attributed to money and "ecosystems" around certain industries.

I wasn’t aware .NET was any more proprietary than anything else these days. Care to elaborate?

Speaking as a Canadian who moved to the US for work, I think a huge reason is that if you’re an ambitious Canadian it’s a lot easier to move to the US than trying to make it in Canada.

I can’t speak to the other external factors, but I think brain drain to the US is quite significant.

> well educated residents

Well schooled residents, at least. Canadians have more schooling than anywhere else in the world according to the OECD. How well they are educated is questionable, however. Canada lacks the markers of an educated society – incomes are low and stagnant, very little political engagement, etc.

> Giving birth to one OpenAI per year is arguably better than getting 100 new dry-cleaner businesses per-year.

The article is written through the eyes of BDC. Is one OpenAI actually better for them than 100 dry cleaning businesses? Would an OpenAI-like business even seek funding through BDC when they can just as easily secure a payday from Microsoft?

>full access to the US market

As an Old Worlder I would like to know what this means. If you have a website or a SaaS and are located in Canada, do you mean you can sell freely, wothout restriction, and without regulatory burden, the same as if you were operating within the US?

>It is about how many successful companies are being born

What per capita metrics should be used for this?

?Rail, Banks, Oil and Gas are the consistent winners, all well-connected and deeply rooted, and rare is the startup that becomes a star on the TSX

Do you reckon there is room for innovation here?

What a joke.. it's hard to believe this level of stupidity , it might just be malice (a pretext to justify raising interest rates and increase unemployment)

The political branch of the government does not control interest rates, nor have any say in them. The Prime Minister cannot raise or lower interest rates.

This is the same in most western democracies, as such things cannot be left to political control.

I mean, they admit that they only have "considerable independence", but not "total independence":

"The Bank of Canada is a special type of Crown corporation, owned by the federal government, but with considerable independence to carry out its responsibilities."

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about

They also add: "The Governor and Senior Deputy Governor are appointed by the Bank's Board of Directors (with the approval of Cabinet), not by the federal government."

... and the BoD are appointed by cabinet.

Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do!

Does the political branch make the decisions? No. But they choose the people that do!

This by no means implies any control over interest rates. At all.

People are appointed, and that's where political input ends. And those appointed stay appointed, are not chosen lightly, markets do not react well to poor choice.

By your metric, you'd think our Supreme court judges were puppets too. They aren't.

People may have political leanings, but understand, that is not the same as allowing input where it is not allowed.

The government cannot interfere with the judicial branch, nor with fiscal policy. To do so, renders it a banana republic, or dictatorship, any attempts would be disaster, for those appointed take this very seriously.

A core part of the job is to ignore ministers, the PMO, and so on.

It is entirely independent.

Bank of Canada directors are on 3-year (renewable) terms.

You don't need someone that will take in your input when you install people that are going to do what you want in the first place.

The governor and deputy are 7 years, appointed by directors. They control fiscal policy.

Look, I know it's fashionable to claim that everyone just ignores their roles via legislation (such as the bank of canada act), ignores change and what's happening in the world around them, to instead act as puppets, but that's just not how it works.

>By your metric, you'd think our Supreme court judges were puppets too

In the US supreme court judges almost always agree with whatever position is favoured by the party that appointed them, even if nominally independent.

If this were true, SCOTUS would almost always be split 5-4. But, it is not. In fact, it typically has significantly more 9-0 decisions than 5-4.

For example: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/23/trey-wingo...

>If this were true, SCOTUS would almost always be split 5-4

That'd only be the case if there were no policies with bi-partisan support. How many of those 9-0 are for politically contentious issues?

You say that as if that's relevant, when discussing Canada.

And you're confusing political leanings, with influence. Political leanings which can, and have changed over careers. Not to mention, some of them outlive everyone who appointed them.

This is wrong. They can fire the director (which sets the policy). As the director is not that independent (or there is no strong safe guard that she is) then you indirectly set the interest rate.

No. Just no.

The Governor(not director) os not appointed by the government. Nor fired.

You need to read up on this. Please. You're just making stuff up.

The CBC is little more than crass government propaganda at this point. Canada in general should be viewed as a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks more government intervention in our lives, is a good thing.

Nonsense. Don’t spread misinformation.

Spoken with the same tone and language that the nanny state and media use. It's inappropriate and shameful. I hope more people start to see through it before civil society is completely lost.

I am Canadian and am in agreement with the point to which you replied. There is no misinformation about Canada moving backwards comparatively to what it once was.

As someone that has lived in several countries, and currently in Canada, I will respectfully have to disagree both about your opinion of the CBC and beliefs about government intervention. Some parts of Canadian local/provincial/federal government seem deeply dysfunctional, but some are extremely helpful and better than I’ve seen elsewhere.

You're seeing what remains of a strong and healthy period of Canadian history. But almost every facet is currently under threat and significant stress.

You can't fund a "news" organization with public money and expect them to be an independent agency that holds the government's feet to the fire. They don't do much more than add a thin veneer of objectivity and independent analysis for any significant government initiative.

The article posted above is just a small piece of evidence for the broken nature of the media. There is a torrent more spewing out daily.

Counterpoint: You can't fund a news organization with private money and expect them to hold private organizations' feet to the fire. Any time they are critical of a major business, they lose advertisers.

Personally, I have a problem with the viewpoint that democratic governments are some sort of adversary when in actuality, private businesses are the entities that have no accountability and we have zero direct control over. I agree there should be independent criticism of government, but IMO state media from a democratic government is naturally going to be better overall than only having private media.

Everyone has their own interests in mind and so everyone has to be balanced against each other. Come on people we figured this out hundreds of years ago.

Without government picking winners and loser (through protective legislation and regulation) the free market means that honest competition keeps corporations in check. There is an adversarial element inherent in the system. The reason we have so many entrenched monopolies is because they have captured the government.. a government that has no adversary and isn't even properly monitored by the corrupt and complicit media.

I don’t see people becoming homeless because of medical bills in Canada.

I don’t see people getting shot nearly as much in Canada.

I don’t see as many exploited illegal immigrants in Canada.

To fight corporate greed and capitalistic cynicism we do need government.

I don't know why they are homeless, but there are quite a bit of homeless there; along with 15-people illegal boarding homes. Canadian real estate market is also quite a miracle.

Compared to US, I suppose. Canadian homicide rate is comparable to Balkan countries, each famous in their own way of dysfunction and corruption.

Drop the word "illegal" and you will see a lot. How do you expect illegal immigrants to get to Canada when they only border US?

The final point is quite amusing since it's the Canadian Government and the regulatory capture it creates that screws up a lot of things in Canada and pushes prices to insane levels (mobile phone plans, housing as two examples that came to my mind) while also depressing wages via immigration.

> Canadian homicide rate is comparable to Balkan countries

At 2.1/100,000 it’s a hair above the 2021 Balkans average, which is, frankly, quite low and just a little higher than the Northern Europe average.

> each famous in their own way of dysfunction and corruption.

Yes, but not for high homicide rates.

What’s the point you are trying to make?

If being Balkan-like is good enough, then yeah I understand why you wouldn't complain. After reading the other comments on this page it seems that "Well, it's good* enough." should be the national Canadian slogan or something.

[*] For some low standard of good

GP suggests you ar cherry picking the data to make irrelevant data inferences.

Here is a counter example. Cuba sees ~0 Rhinecarops homicide, ergo it's just as developed as Canada and Belgium.

> Drop the word "illegal" and you will see a lot.

There are major differences between legal immigrants, who have to pass some pretty strict tests of suitability, and uncontrolled immigration. Legal immigrants have most of the rights and obligations of citizens, including access to healthcare and paying taxes.

> How do you expect illegal immigrants to get to Canada when they only border US?

Canada has thankfully developed enough by now to have airports.

> I don't know why they [sic] are homeless

You said it yourself: expensive real estate.

> Canada has thankfully developed enough by now to have airports.

Truly spoken like someone who has no information about illegal immigration. I suppose the border control just lets everyone in? Or flights to Canada just let everyone board without checking their visas? Or Canadian embassies just throw around visas without checking for illegal immigration risk? For those who don't need visas, anyone interested in illegally immigrating from this list of countries (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...) are much better served by buying a bus ticket to Germany.

> Truly spoken like someone who has no information about illegal immigration

Quote from this [0] article: "But in the past 10 years, visa overstays in the United States have outnumbered border crossings by a ratio of about 2 to 1, according to Robert Warren, who was for a decade the director of the statistics division at the agency that has since been renamed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services".

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/re...

US and Canada are two entirely different countries with entirely different approaches to immigration, and the numbers are wildly different:

> There are no accurate figures representing the number or composition of undocumented immigrants residing in Canada. A guesstimate of about half a million has been proposed nationally [1, 2], but this number varies among other sources which suggest anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 undocumented workers [3–5]. In 2003, Ontario’s Construction Secretariat purported that there were 76,000 non-status immigrants in Ontario’s construction industry alone, while other sources confirmed that at least 36,000 failed refugee applicants had never been deported, and another 64,000 individuals overstayed their work, student or visitor visas in 2002 [5]. If it is assumed that workers are accompanied by family, the numbers in Ontario would rise to the highest figure previously estimated for all of Canada. With respect to settlement, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto have the highest number of undocumented migrants [6], with nearly 50% residing in Toronto alone [7].

The total number if illegal immigrants is probably around 10% of the yearly intake of legal immigrants.

Whereas US keeps going for new records: https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensio...

First you rudely accuse me of being an ignorant for pointing out that illegal immigration often occurs through airports, and when proven wrong you deflect and try to switch the subject instead of admitting that you were mistaken.

It's immature and you can do better than that.

I believe that is incredibly out of date now https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...

I would like to understand how that relates to the method of entry of illegal immigrants into Canada.

Let's remember the root claim that is being disputed:

> How do you expect illegal immigrants to get to Canada when they only border US?

The homicide rate in my poor corrupted Balkan country is 4 times lower than the US.

One of the few things we can take solace in as Balkanites: at least it's not as bad as it could be. Thank you US for showing that money does not necessarily fix all your problems.

Yea sure sure but it's significantly worse now that before. As more people become more desperate, they will turn to crime. Canada needs an embodiment of Theseus to defeat the Procrustes like progressives.

>I don’t see as many exploited illegal immigrants in Canada.

There is not a large land border with Mexico in Canada, but Canadians are happy enough to exploit what they call temporary foreign workers who do jobs they don't want to do and have rights which fall short of a citizens on paper and in practice.

This difference seems less due to Canada's superior nature than it seems due to Canada being surrounded by oceans on three sides and by a wealthier country on the fourth side. In fact I think Canadians would do well to keep in mind that they don't face the same issues that other countries do before passing judgement on immigration issues. Almost all immigrants to Canada are immigrants Canada explicitly welcomed to the country who met every qualification.

Wrt who is happy to exploit TFWs: is it Canadians, or the Canadian government at the request of Canadian big business?

Who stands to gain? Without TFWs the minimum wage (or the amount actually paid for workers) would have to rise - supply and demand.

Well in some cases the gain is mutual especially for things like seasonal agriculture work where demand for labour periodically peaks and the labour is utterly miserable. I've seen seasonal labour wages spike to twice the minimum wage, and still seen fruit rot on the field and people continue working their minimum wage jobs at Tim Hortons. This is an area where the poor of the nation arguably benefit from the underclass by driving down the cost of fresh produce and not having to do this back breaking labour.

For other things, like the aforementioned jobs at Tim Hortons, hiring temporary foreign worker is nothing but a wage suppression scheme meant to solve the "problem" of Tim Horton's being unprofitable and locations shutting down in a low unemployment environment, and the whole "temporary" thing is something to be worked around.

The previous government got in a world of shit for doing the latter and eventually stopped and banned much of the wage suppression aspect of this program. A few years back the incumbent government figured enough people aren't paying attention and re-legalised the fast food underclass again to suppress wages to address the "labour shortage" because fast food workers were faint making more than minimum wage and shudder taking a greater share of the profits of the fast food business.

Great insights, would love to see more.

Anecdotally, I've seen that fast food example often. Most of the time they think they're going to get PR in the long run.

Further, there's a lot of these fast food restaurants working employees extra hours off the table on cash

As a person who has very close familial ties to other countries (US and Europe), and been around a decent bit, I still think life in Canada is better than in other places (for me). Sure we have problems, some of them are getting even worse than before, but comparatively we’re doing okay. It’s easy to say everything sucks here, but it also sucks in other places for different reasons.

Full disclaimer, I consider myself politically moderate/centrist and still think CBC is very valuable. And again, I understand everyone has different priorities in life and Canada might not be suitable for them. But implying “we have it the worst and nobody would want to live here if they had a way to get out” is also wrong.

But isn't perhaps the relatively better life simply due to the truly stupendous ratio of land and natural resources per person that make up for the deficiencies of the system?

Yes. But it's still an objectively better life compared to other places in the world. Hopefully Canada has enough time to correct any system deficiencies before our natural resources run out.

I mean, yeah? Every country uses (if they can) their natural resources to prop up everything. Some better than others (e.g. Norwegian generational fund), some invest basically into every possible thing imaginable (Saudi and Aramco), and Canada does it in just in an average way. Either way, nothing is perfect, things might go for worse, but as of now, it’s a good place for me and others that I know.

Or maybe the issue is regulatory capture of government, not government itself?

‘Government intervention’ isn’t the same as a government who works to support the needs of citizens.

There's no government system that has been proposed that can not be captured. The only option that has proven to work so far, is to limit the government, so that regulatory capture doesn't matter that much.

Perhaps you are being a bit cynical? There are certainly no problems that can't be solved by giving more money to government initiatives like the MaRS Centre in Ontario. These institutions also create jobs and are businesses of a certain sort, so funding them is supporting business directly.

And who can argue with the results? Several promising entrepreneurs each year take advantage of these critical programs to consult with pro-business advisers who assist in job creation by recommending they apply for 3k tax breaks.

Your cynicism is so sophisticated I am impressed.

Especially when wages in Canada for skilled labor are horrendous.

I don't know.. before the tech boom that redefined basic meanings, entrepreneurs were known as folks who were otherwise unemployable. So yes some people start companies because they have a blinding ambition but others do so out of necessity.

Unless you want a yacht or find every other option so miserable/impossible, why would you be an entrepreneur?

It’s a lot of work and there’s plenty of money to be made as a corporate drone.

Some people just hate to be a corporate drone.

It’s not only about material wealth, it’s about agency.

If you’re a corporate drone, someone else owns your time. Want to take some time off? You need permission from your employer. Want to do something differently? Need permission. Want to think for yourself or take initiative? Frowned upon at best, forbidden at worst.

Nothing wrong with one or the other, but it doesn’t suit everyone.

It takes time for a business to be at the level where you can do the above. At the start, you are essentially a slave to your business.

A union Canadian civil servant can work 35 hour weeks and be unfirable even if their actions are frowned upon. Whereas an entrepreneur often gets to work a liberating 80 hours a week and stepping a toe out of line can draw the ire of clients and bankrupt them.

Of all the criticisms I would have of Canadian work culture, lack of autonomy is not one of them.

>ell... the whole push for this is coming from callous bureaucrats who've never been anywhere close to entrepreneurship who apparently believe its so bad that the only reason someone would do it is if they have no other options..

In all fairness, isn't that a legitimate reason? If you could make a very comfy life and retire early I think many would be entrepreneurs would take the easy way out. Of course, some want the big cash out or strongly believe in their mission, but many people are there for the money.

Of course, I can't verify if wages in Canada are indeed "too well. Seems like an outdated statement if the economy up there is anything close to the US's. Legitimate reason with incorrect data is simply a misguided take.

It's definitely not the case.

Canada has a cost of living crisis, and an entire generation has been priced out of the possibility of owning a home.

One can survive better than in the US at the extremely low end, and being sick won't kill or bankrupt you.

But nobody is living a "comfy" life without busting and hustling.

Engineers at big tech are.

Engineers in big tech in the US own houses, vacation home(s), and have Lambo money if they want (which most don't).

Engineers in big tech in Canada can comfortably own ONE house.

Relative to the baseline, it's definitely cushy. Relative to each other...not quite.

All my late 20s accountant friends are buying houses right now. I know a chemical engineer doing the same. Likewise for everyone in tech. And a lot of people live with their parents and will inherit a family house at some point too.

Plenty of people living comfy.

At least in the US, tech is currently in a wage supression war, and I’m afraid this will ripple out all the world.

But for “a lot of people live with their parents” that’s actually a sign that things are not going well at all. This can be seen all over Europe, and just means that people cannot afford to move out, not that they like living with their parents. If/when they inherit their parent’s house they might be in their fifties or sixties, and most of their prime life is gone by then.

No, it really isn't. There's a cultural preference in the white USA for "moving out" of your parents house, but that's not universal.

Canada is very multicultural, and a lot of people choose to live with their parents as a matter of preference.

On your second point, I don't see what being in the "prime of life" has to do with living with your parents or not. But even that isnt the case , for example my friend's grandma is moving into a retirement home so they're moving into her old house.

Wow, we get to inherit houses after both our parents die? How comfy.

You're joking but yes. You get to save on rent, and live close to family for longer than most people forced to move out. If you don't have to pay most people's highest expense, you can have a very comfortable life.

And since Canada's population is shrinking, this is a significant amount of families that don't have to worry about housing ever.

However, Canada has lots of immigrants, and it's very hard for immigrants to break into the housing market. Both of these are true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com