From: michael perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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
