Re: Finland again

[Carl Remick <carlremick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: michael perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> I wrote to a friend who spent a lot of time in Finland at a very elite
> level.  Here is her response:...
>
> I am very much biased in favor of Finland, but I do realize the downsides.
> For example, there's a great contrast to the "can do" attitude of America.
> As an entrepreneur there, both starting my software company and my musical
> career, I was constantly faced with people emphasizing what I couldn't do
> and why, why my idea would fail, etc.

I don't see this as a downside at all.  I think much of what makes the US
such a lunatic asylum is attributable to utter heedlessness that masquerades
as a "can do" attitude.  Having spent decades in the service of Corporate
America, I would say US business is characteristically shortsighted -- able
to reason from A to B but more or less incapable of envisioning consequences
C - Z.  In direct experience, this iron law of management myopia can be
amusing at first but gets very wearing after long exposure.

> For the longest time, until the
> mid-90's, bankruptcy was looked on as something shameful (often it
> resulted in suicide), as opposed to a natural course of the business
> cycle.

This, too, seems to me as an odd POV.  I think *personal* bankruptcy -- due
to illness, etc. -- is often a tragedy.  But in a business context, much
bankruptcy is just the predictable consequence of calamitous recklessness
and self-indulgence -- witness the dot-com era -- and nothing "natural" at
all.

Having never been to Finland, I am in no position to judge for sure whether
Finns have excessive aversion to risk.  I can only say that, having been
born in the US and reached advanced middle age here, it has finally fit me
that I am tempermentally not suited to be American; US norms do not strike
me as normal.  Talk about slow learners.

Carl