I'm not convinced. There are plenty of countries with social safety nets galore, and all of them seem to have fewer freedoms and fewer small businesses created per capita than the USA.

If this is any indication, the US is certainly not winning that race:

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Micr...

I'm looking for a better source still, so if you find one please post it here.

EDIT: I found this. Numbers are a bit old (2007), but it shows self-employment rate per capita on page 4, which is exactly the metric we're interested in discussing.

https://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/small-business-2...

So, based on those two sources, your assertion seems straight up incorrect.

I'm not sure where that first link is getting its numbers, or why they're so outdated, but the US Small Business Association puts the number of small businesses in the US at around 31.7 million [0], or just over 100 per 1,000 people, which would top that list (excluding Indonesia, which, BTW why is it so high?)

[0] https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/0512...

Do companies count as self-employed, though?

That's because good safety nets means people don't have to take risks on business. So that leaves only the people who want to start a business.

Who tend to leave for countries where it's easier to run a business and where they don't have to pay for the safety nets, but that's besides the point.

As for freedoms, I don't know. Not that much of a difference between US, UK and Germany from what I can tell.

The US is the last man standing in the west that still employs these legacy policies. Where are they going to go? China?

Why are the FAANG companies all based in the US?

Large amounts of venture capital from US investors, a really large monolingual market and path dependence.

More generally though, relying on outliers for your argument is perhaps not the best approach.

Outlier? FAANG is just the top of the market. Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater.

Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors.

Monolingual? The global business world runs on English.

Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

> Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater.

I'm not convinced that this is the case. Like, the US market is cheaper to operate in relative to other markets the same size (e.g. the EU) because you have an over-arching system of laws, contracts and (most importantly) language.

If your theory is correct, then one would expect the US to remain the largest source of profitable companies globally. If my theory is correct, one might expect China/India to take it's place. Come back in 20 years, I guess?

> Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors.

Can you point to some sources on this. A quick Google didn't reveal much information, and I really would like to know. Modulo Softbank, I suspect that it's mostly US based institutions giving VC's their money.

> Monolingual? The global business world runs on English.

All of the big companies you mentioned sell to consumers, not businesses, so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant. My point was that the US is a relatively integrated, large market with one language. Most startups begin in their home company. While a startup from Greece would likely have to hire more people to scale across the EU (20+ languages), the equivalent US based startup can scale happily without worrying about languages for a much longer period.

> Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

FAANG are 100% outliers, I don't see how you can believe otherwise.

However, Europe has produced SAP (uggghhhh), Spotify, and a bunch of second-tier fintechs (but given the regulatory advantages of the EU in this space, I suspect one of them will conquer the world).

> Can you point to some sources on this.

No, but I've heard it many times. I've also seen plenty of talk about the trade deficit not being a deficit at all, as the balance is foreign investment in the US, which is not counted.

> so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant

Attend a trade show. They're in English, even in foreign countries. Every single one I've attended.

The bottom line is, which companies do you invest in?

Same reason they make most of their physical stuff in China. The government allows the most abuses.

Most "businesses" created in America are shell corps designed to push money around and limit liabilities. They don't produce anything.

What freedoms are other countries lacking?

Just guns?

The freedom to say mildly offensive things on Twitter without getting punished by the state?

In Germany it is illegal to school your children if you don’t like what the public institutions are doing.

As a European… The problem with safety net is it brings taxes to cover that safety net. And regulations for companies to make them part of that safety net. In the end it makes it harder to start a small business and more comfy to be employed. Essentially helping big businesses to stamp out competition.

Some safety net without the negatives would be nice. But where will the money come from?

And if one were to consider healthcare premiums in the US as a "tax", the US looks very much like a European country. We in the US are already paying for the safety net, but without actually getting one.

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-a...

You're conflating security with freedom. You can have security or freedom, but not both.

You absolutely can have both, because the world does not boil down to simplistic either or choices. You can argue that freedom and security are oppostite poles of a sliding scale, and most people would agree with you. But nobody wants absolute freedom (anarchy and literal lawlessness) nor does anyone want absolute security. People want degrees of both.

It's a naieve mindset to think it's all or nothing.

> You absolutely can have both

It's a sliding scale between security and freedom. Every bit of security you want means giving up a corresponding freedom.

Also, most people do not include "freedom to harm others" when they're talking about freedom. I've never heard of anyone carrying a sign saying "FREEDOM" and meaning they want to be free to hurt others.

How am I less free because my country has free healthcare and decent unemployment benefits?

Neither of those is free. You still pay for it, plus you pay for the government's cost of administering it. You're worse off.

With "free" government health care, you're not only paying more for it, but you no longer get to choose what health care you get. You get what a government bureaucrat says you get.

Walter, it’s amazing how often I see you weigh in on economic and political issues on this forum when you have a poor grasp of even the basics. Claiming that privatised healthcare is somehow more efficient in spite of overwhelming real world evidence to the contrary, or that people are capable of meaningfully informed choices in picking a healthcare plan and somehow find it life-enhancing to have to do this, or ignoring the fact that funding it through taxation rather than insurance results in more universal and equitable access, and entirely glossing over adverse selection problems, is just amateur house stuff. You’d get laughed at in a high school classroom with this stuff but here you are trying to talk about it with authority.

Are you sure about your points?

I've never made the claim that privatized health care is more efficient. I have claimed that free market health care is more efficient. If you've got evidence that government health care is more efficient, let alone overwhelming evidence, I'd like to see it.

From what I've seen from high school economics, they can laugh at me all they want. But they don't know anything as they are taught by high school teachers who don't have any training in economics and have never held a private sector job or run a business.

Here's a reference for you with plenty of evidence that contradicts your claims. Read it and get back to me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...

BTW, you made one of my points for me. You just said that having the government force a plan on you is better than you picking your own plan. You gave up your freedom for security. Exactly what I was talking about.

Google "US health expenditure vs life expectancy" and "adverse selection in healthcare", read the top few links and get back to me.

You're making several basic mistakes thinking about freedom, because once again you're not even familiar with basic knowledge of the topic. In particular:

- Confusing the quality and quantity of choices. Free healthcare increases freedom because it increases overall quality of choices people can make - if you'd even encountered the concept of the capability approach to human welfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach) you wouldn't have made this basic mistake.

- You're conflating capitalism with freedom, when in fact capitalism is built on top of property law, a very anti-freedom system. Property is the biggest government program their is, and is enforced with violent anti-freedom, liberty-destroying government force.

In other words, you're so ideological you're not even wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).

You didn't read the article I cited. Please return when you have.

BTW, the Soviet Union didn't allow people to own property, and had free healthcare. People were so free there they had to build a wall around it and shoot people who tried to escape. Ditto for every other communist country.

And where do those freedom-loving people want to go? The US. So many, in fact, that the US had to build a wall to keep them out.

What do all those people know that you missed?

People in Norway with high taxes, high state ownership of the economy, and a great welfare state seem to be happily staying in Norway rather than clamouring to move to the USA for the extra “freedom”, even in spite of the weather. What do all these people know that you missed?

No, I'm simply restating Maslov's hierarchy of needs. You cannot reach self-actualization without first covering basic needs. One of which is, ironically, called "safety". As in, perhaps, a safety net...

Or, in other words, to have the freedom to self-actualize, you must have security in your basic needs.

No. Any government big enough to bail everyone out, is big enough to take away everything we have. One of the parent posters said they didn't get the Trump thing. It's easy. Trump whether worth $1 or Ten Billion dollars got what converservatives and the majority want; government out of the way. And preferably the end of career politicians.

So most federal conservatives. Who are career politicians. Want to get rid of career politicians? After doing nothing to get rid of career politicians their whole career?

This doesn’t track. No politician from either side wants to limit themselves out of a job.