Why Will Finland Fail? | Hacker News Reader

Why Will Finland Fail?

toughloveangel.com

13 pointsmmarjala9 comments

As far as I can tell, the article basically boils down to these points (while taking a while to get to them):

1. The author supports increasing immigration, targeted in a likely-to-be-entrepreneurial category, especially from Russia and China.

2. The author opposes the "Nordic model" of a strong social safety net, considering it wasted money on "people that don't like to work".

The author supports bringing in especially the brightest minds which are always a super scarce resource.

To summarize the primary ways how value at the national level is created:
1. You sell your unique resources (e.g. oil, salmon) to other nations.
2. You steal from other nations or borrow money but never pay back.

3. You have competitive companies that export products to other nations.

I'm intrigued that #2 makes the list. Almost as though the OP could only think of 2 ways. He seems to have forgotten the service economy.

>3. You have competitive companies that export products to other nations.

Author seems to forget that these companies don't need to be of finnish origin. It's completly ok strategy to just educate lots of engineers and let IBM or other large company hire them (and pay income taxes to Finland). Educated workforce does create value even if there isn't silicon valley of start-ups in Finland.

The author agrees on this. It, naturally, is much more valuable for a nation to produce these companies themselves and get sometimes access to multiple revenue streams, and subsidiaries rarely buy companies and enrich the nearby ecosystem through that.

I don't think the internal service economy really increases a nation's value relative to other nations. If I buy a t-shirt from my neighbor and he repays by cleaning my house ... not really that scalable I think.

A key requirement IMHO for a functional service economy is high enough differences in salaries (so that there are people who can afford to buy services in scale) and low-cost workers. In Finland, and broader in Nordics, we don't have either.

I may be missing something obvious, but why does OP say China is a "neigbouring country" to Finland, when it is 3900 miles/6300 km between their capitals?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+helsinki+...

The author appears to put too much stress on physical proximity to other entities. Perhaps it's a factor to consider if you are not serving an online population, but such startups are really few and far between... especially as far as HN is concerned :)

Physical proximity is a great advantage to understand the real local problems. Example: It is very tough for US companies serve Chinese or Russian markets, as the cultures are so different and local problems quite different to problems in US - or Finland. It depends on the category and domain ... but even gaming preferences are quite different in different regions. Very few hit games that work everywhere - the one area where we Finns really rock the world (Angry Birds, Clash of Clans etc.)

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