Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubyrescue | Hacker News Reader

It depends on the business. There are a lot of people bootstrapping here but their business is in the US or Europe. The cost of living is still a lot less than those places, the weather is great, talent is good, etc. It's true the government is insane, but the average small startup here is below the radar from that stuff.

View on HN

But a lot of those factors apply to Chile and it's even quite close if friends and family are a factor. They are 88 places better on the corruption index and about 151 places better on economic freedom index, plus the government has an innovative technology accelerator program. Those are massive differences. Indeed it's probably one of the top differences for neighbours in the whole world besides North and South Korea. Chile also seems to have better education, as last I checked a significant portion of Argentinians haven't even completed primary school. But perhaps competition to hire talent is greater as well.

It seems to me Argentina is in a pretty dire situation at the moment. There is even a, small but real, possibility things could collapse into a failed state or dictatorship if the economic situation spirals out of control.

Edit: The economic freedom gap is actually bigger than South and North Korea! Argentina (158th of 179) is only just hovering above the failed states/dictatorships. I expect next years ranking will also be worse as things have gotten worse.

> There is even a, small but real, possibility things could collapse into a failed state or dictatorship if the economic situation spirals out of control.

Not a chance. At all.

I said the chance was "small", you are saying there is no chance but let's examine that a little more closely. First of all there is no country on earth that doesn't have some chance of descending into tyranny in a fairly short timespan if things go bad economically, we've seen it countless times. I wouldn't let your patriotism (I presume) blind you to that fact. So if we take the best governed countries and say the chances of dictatorship are "tiny", and in some of the less well governed first world countries it's "very small", then it's probably being quite kind to say an incredibly corrupt South American third (second?) world country on the brink of economic disaster only has a "small" chance of going badly.

i would question the education. certainly here in chile there's a widepsread feeling that chile's education system is exemplary in how poor it is.

also, while it's amusing to read the comments here as someone living in santiago, i have to say that i am big fan of bbaa food + culture. it's a pretty awesome place. even if you don't want to work there, i'd encourage anyone to have a vacation in buenos aires.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com