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Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

> The solution is providing a social safety net that enables that bulk of the population to pursue their dream.

We have a huge "social safety net" here in France and yet we are way less entrepreneurial than in the US. I moved to Peru for 4 years to save some money and then came back to start a business, the entrepreneurial spirit was way strong stronger there even though the social safety net is inexistent.

Fact is, having a social safety net makes people comfortable in their poor economic situation and does not require them to take risks. Even in the US, the number of new companies created each year has decreased as the welfare state has grown.

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Peru might have a lot more entrepreneurially minded people, and more self-employed people but France certainly has more successful tech startups (even on a per capita basis).

Just as lack of a safety net biases towards action and self reliance, it also skews the risk/reward ratio of those actions firmly towards those most likely to keep the roof over ones head.

The reason there are more tech startups in France is because people are better educated.

True, but then arguably education (and especially several years of heavily-subsidised tertiary education) is part of the safety net, and the safety net certainly contributes towards choice to pursue that education rather than accepting the first shitty informal sector opportunity that enables them to support themselves.

Obviously there are plenty of other social and economic differences between Peru and France, but the fact that even Peru's relatively small number of highly-educated people is still highly likely to be underemployed doesn't exactly speak wonders for the potential of all these entrepreneurially-minded Peruvians to actually create jobs.

Peru does have public education too so I don't think that's the issue. It's just that people are less educated in general so schools are not that good. South Korea has half of its schools private and they're doing great so I don't think you even need public schooling to be doing great as a country.

Safety is necessary but not sufficient.

Apparently not.

I moved to Peru for 4 years to save some money and then came back to start a business, the entrepreneurial spirit was way strong stronger there even though the social safety net is inexistent.

It's hard to start business in france because of the regulatory bs.

Even trying to register a company is a right pain.

Indeed, the problem is more with the bureaucratic paperwork more than anything else, it takes 6 months to just have the legal paperwork to start a company there.

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