> Because risk. Rich, privileged people can try different things with zero risk of becoming destitute

You can do that as well in many EU countries. Without being rich.

> You can do that as well in many EU countries. Without being rich.

But, interestingly, few people do. And those who do seem to take on less risk than their counterparts in the US.

I think people take a lot of risks here: a lot of people would be dying of starvation if they did not have the safetynet. But yes, agreed, people do not seem to want to go all out. I think you need some existential panic to excel (depending on your definition of excel of course), but I am not religious so I do not want existential panic or any type of risk really. And I guess most people have the same feeling here. Just playing risk yourself is no risk as there is the safetynet, but once you start witb other people their lives, it becomes different.

Where I was born, everyone has money and people are generally modest: do not need ferraris or whatever so they just want a happy relaxed life. And that is very easy to get here. I worked very hard since I was 15 as I wanted (and have) (not ferraris but travel) more, but I was never interested in money or fame that can get someone kidnapped. I believe if I lived in the US, my parents would have sent me to Stanford or something and things might have been different somehow. I will never know: I like not having stress, at all so no regrets.

Well good for you. You’ve come to the right place. ;)

To be clear, I don’t grieve the lack of Ferraris. But the lack of ambition and related consequences gets to me.

As do it does to me. The ambition here is low but I do not know how to fix it without destroying what makes it nice here. I do not think anyone does. And playing the odds is just much easier here. Almost 0% of making a billion but never under a bridge and a quite high % chance of having a good life.

The world you describe is alien to me.

Been living there for almost 50 years. Works fine.

We don't seem to generate much more innovation than our overseas cousins, though.

A safety net may lead some people to experiment and play with things, others to slouching off. This even applies outside the public sphere. A stereotype of a bored millionaire's son with no energy to do anything substantial exists for a reason.

You have that everywhere, but yeah I think without a safetynet more people fight harder. So as you do not have the extreme upsides(but also not the extreme downsides) I guess we will never have the facebooks or googles here. It takes some kind of battle. Or being rich from birth and being able to hire people like that. Personally I do not enjoy that very much.

Sadly I think it also promotes (overt) envy and crab mentality. Many people use their safety to pull others down rather than try to excel. It pains me to say this, and I wish it wasn’t so, but it seems to me that people only accept meritocracy when there is some kind of external threat…

I am not so sure "safety net" cuts it.

I would prefer just taking every 21 year old and saying "here is 15 grand, go do something amazing".

I don't know what the results will be, but a fair number will be worth the risk.

15 grand is enough to live off of... for a year... if you're frugal, have no debts, and your amazing thing doesn't require any startup expenses. It's not enough to make risk aversion meaningfully less important. I suspect most 21 year olds would still do the same things as they do otherwise, just with a marginally better lifestyle.

On the other hand, I actually like this idea. It would help people escape abusive situations, and I generally think it's fairly ridiculous how we ask young people to live on so little money while educating themselves. I just don't think it would cause many people to "go do something amazing".

Yeah, my numbers are off by about 20 years :-)

But like you I like the idea ...