Hacker News Reader

Comment by wordbank | Hacker News Reader

Excuse me, but you're too fast on making conclusions. Also you're totally ignoring the lack of vertical social mobility in the Chilean society because poor people have no chance for education and better jobs for their kids.

> It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans.

This statement is too generalized. But even if it's correct then you can't pinpoint it to education. There's a whole culture behind

> Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services

That's simply not true. Chilean government is criticized a lot and the president has very low ratings.

> Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.

Chile is resource-cursed country with quite small population and low corruption. It's not the government's achievement.

View on HN

The primary thing inhibiting vertical social mobility in Chile is cultural.[1] I have worked with chilean high schoolers and college students and they have a lot of opportunity that they don't see because they are locked into a specific tract (namely work for a large company.) The only reason poor people would have no chance for education and better jobs for their kids is if government made education illegal. Even poor people can get together and hire people to teach and teach their kids themselveS (imagine home schooling but with a dozen families cooperating)... unless government prevents it.

The internet has made all the information of the world available free... education is cheaper now than at any point in history.

It's true the chilean government is criticized-- I saw the sometimes weekly marches down the blvd of students and communists making noise. That doesn't mean they are right. When you look at Chile's economic development over the past 20 years and its political stability, it's doing better than it's peers. Sure people are criticizing the president, she may be bad, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I think it's silly to say Chile is resource cursed. You would rather the country be poorer? You think economic development is a curse? Yes, it does have low corruption- that's a good thing and that's a sign of a good government, relatively speaking.

[1] This conclusion, by the way, I'm taking from what I was told by people running Startup Chile as the motivation for the program, it may even be in their public website... and it is consistent with my experiences talking to Chileans. I'm not a chilean culture expert by any means!

>they have a lot of opportunity that they don't see because they are locked into a specific tract (namely work for a large company.)

Honestly, is this not the case with pretty much every country in the world? Most people are looking for a stable job, not "world domination".

To a greater or lesser degree. In america if you do a startup and you fail, you're not seen as a failure and untouchable.

In chile that's more the case, and it can really hurt your career.

This is why Startup Chile is such a brilliant program... it's single handedly introducing entrepreneurship to chileans... and the ones I met really liked it.

Chile is corrupt from top to bottom. It's true that you can't bribe the cops, and Chileans are very proud of this (primarily because you can bribe the cops in Argentina), but access to opportunity in Chile is almost 100% dependent on who you know. The entire business class has raised nepotism to an art form.

While free university education sounds good, even going to a top-ranked school like Universidad de Chile isn't going to help much if you've got the wrong last name and don't have the right pitutos.

> access to opportunity in Chile is almost 100% dependent on who you know

isn't this true everywhere?

how can you take an opportunity from a person you don't know?

Understand it as: Chile is not a meritocracy.

In India, access to the top univeristies is completely determined by score on an entrance exam. Many major employers prefer to hire graduates from IIT. If you find a way to score well, you can get a pretty good job. Maybe not CEO, but a top-5%ile income.

This wasn't my experience. I got into Startup Chile knowing nobody in chile. Many of the other teams there were south americans from a variety of countries, including chile. I really don't believe that last name was a factor in the selection process (Though I do believe being from south america gives you a leg up these days.)

After Startup Chile there were a variety of follow on funding programs, almost all of which I would have difficulty getting in, but that a chilean would have a much easier time getting in.

I knew chileans who were bootstrapping from nothing (who got none of the funding I got) and I knew chileans who were getting investments. The chilean government supports a thriving angel and VC system there which, as far as I can tell is much better than the one in Seattle, though maybe not as good as the bay area.

Sure it is probably more nepotistic-- in hiring-- but I don't believe that when it comes to startups. And all it takes is a few startups to be successful to create a system where more startups are started each year. And then more are successful and it feeds on itself.

Chile doesn't seem to have much regulation keeping businesses out... so really it's all about being willing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, network with others and apply to the opportunities for help that are there-- which was pretty vibrant.

Of course it's all a matter of degrees.

So it's the same as in, for example, the United States or Sweden.

> I have worked with chilean high schoolers and college students and they have a lot of opportunity that they don't see because they are locked into a specific tract (namely work for a large company.)

Far be it from me to label large companies a good thing, but people need some amount of stability in their lives to be able to plan any kind of personal projects. In the capitalist and corporatist societies, people are told to get this stability by working as a salaried employee for a very large firm.

If you want people to become entrepreneurs or something like that, you have to offer them a way to do so that doesn't involve risking their ability to eat, keep a roof over their head, and buy medicine for their ageing parents.

Startup Chile does that and the other programs that do it to greater or lesser degrees are multiplying like rabbits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com