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Why Forbes Says Immigrants Make Better Entrepreneurs
An anonymous reader writes "Romanian emigre Christian Gheorghe is running a Silicon Valley software company now (Tidemark Systems) after getting started in the U.S. hauling plywood on a construction site. Forbes summarizes his path to the top and sees a wider story about immigrants' edge as entrepreneurs."
They took urr jerbs!
The story dwells on one person's story. There are any number of people (both Americans and immigrants) who take any available job and try to work their way up, but opportunities never appear.
Yet another story about contacts being more important than know-how. As if we didn't know that already.
Of course, being an immigrant is, in itself, a filter. Leaving your native country for better opportunities is a strong sign of entrepreneurship. When will journalists learn?
Immigrints are less spoiled than westerners.
... make excellent entrepeneurs as well. You know what they all have in common? They're willing to pursue their goals and prefer to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. That's the #1 thing that all the current crop of silicon valley companies have in common. Not all of them following this formula still exist, but that's what they all have in common, questionable legal standing that they didn't allow to get in the way of making profits hand over fist, and low infrastructure costs to get in the way of rapid expansion.
And if I know this, why am I not rich? Something to do with not doing the crime if you're not willing to do the time. Also I'm lousy with people :)
It is self selection. Immigrants are not risk adverse and are self motivated pretty much by definition. Both skills lend them selves to starting a business.
The word "Why" in the headline suggests that the story will attempt to give us an answer in return for our clickthru. I guess they did - it was one word.
"Pluck."
Gee, Forbes! Thanks.
Immigrants are a self-selecting group. It's quite obvious that an entrepreneurial individual would be more likely to do something risky and ambitious like immigrating to another country.
But researching that is too much like work.
And no one wants to read the story of a nice immigrant who gets an okay job working for someone else and raises an okay family and sends his okay kids to an okay college after which they get okay jobs working for someone else.
Instead, let's focus on the few who DO become successful entrepreneurs (at this moment) and extrapolate trends from those.
They're just pushing the lie and myth that if you work hard enough earning a pittance to enrich somebody else (as happened to this fellow repeatedly), then eventually your hard graft will get you somewhere. What they neglect to tell you is that a lot of what you need to get ahead in highly unequal societies like the US, is _luck_. The 1% like cheap labour -- their whole ideology revolves around forcing down the cost of labour and them seizing a bigger slice of the pie.
The message is that if you're a good girl or boy and work your guts out, you'll be rewarded. It's libertarian, Ayn Rand bullshit -- for every story about somebody hitting the big time, there are 100 stories about people who slave like coolies for 70 hours a week, and still remain poor.
Stop complaining and get a job you dirty hippies
Immigrants like Gheorghe don’t dawdle in their pursuit of better opportunities. They start at any available entry point in the job market, and then rapidly advance toward very ambitious personal goals. They keep pushing ahead, even if it means hauling plywood on a construction site or making small talk with whatever big shots they might be driving around in a borrowed limo.
I don't know if it's relevant, but I can see the point.
Imagine you're an Immigrant. New country, new opportunities. The place you come from is a real hole and at every turn you see econmic prosperity. I'd be excited if I got to get my hands on things I never had access too before. If had a good vision, and I knew that nothing but hard work was between myself and success? Damn right I'd be sucessful. That is the problem with being an Entrepreneur. Having an idea is about 2% of your key to success. The other 150% is hard work. Really really really hard 100 hours a week endless work.
The problem with being here, in the land of opportunity is that we're saturated in it. We lose perspective.We don't know what's really important and we lack the motivation to find out.
As written above, the result is not so surprising since emigrating is an enterprise in its own right.
Another question is whether foreigners make better entrepreneurs. Doing such a study would need to include those who haven't migrated in order of avoiding a selection bias.
Introductory paragraph that states immigrants are twice as likely to launch a high-tech startup as their native born peers, and introduces us to Christian Gheorghe.
Eight paragraphs on Gheorghe's story (which is interesting, to be fair, talking about his first job in the U.S. in 1989 which was carrying plywood for $100 a week and a free bologna sandwich at lunchtime).
Last two paragraphs are a comment on the number of immigrants earning engineering Ph.D.s in recent years and finally some boring generic drivel about "they keep pushing ahead".
Gheorghe's story is interesting and he's obviously worked really hard. But this is a useless and silly story. There's no insight or discussion or, well, anything of any substance.
P.S. - pedant mode on. The /. headline is badly written. "Why Forbes Says Immigrants Make Better Entrepreneurs" - because it gets page views, just like Slashdot. What you actually mean is "Forbes Discusses Why Immigrants Make Better Entrepreneurs". Which the Forbes article doesn't do; it just gives eight paragraphs of a case study surrounded by meaningless drivel. Pedant mode off.
I lived in Taiwan for a while. I was told, and it fits with what I've seen, that while children in America are raised on the dream of getting a secure high paying job, children in Taiwan are raised on the dream of owning their own business. I suspect that dream doesn't go away just because they move to America.
Americans are used to the options of 1. always being able to find a job (McDonald's is always hiring) and nearly always a decent job (English is the ticket) and 2. having welfare as an option if they're too lazy or "too good" to take the jobs that are available. Immigrants are often raised in places where those options don't exist and starting your own business is the only way to survive. Starting a business is risky and takes a lot of work. Why do it if you have other options for a secure prosperous future?
An immigrant is likely to see opportunities an American would miss because growing up in another culture they know there is another way to do things. For example, if I were more entrepreneurial, artistic and less risk-averse, I would start a business taking wedding photos like I saw in Taiwan and marketing this service to American women. There is more than one way to do wedding photos but living only in America you might not see it.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 set in motion the process of electing a new people, there has been a collapse in the middle class. Since the ramp-up of "skilled" immigration, there has been a collapse of the economy itself.
This supports the theory that the older cultures that have been taking up positions of trust and authority in government, academia and business are, unsurprisingly, more sophisticated in playing the rent-seeking and zero-sum games required to gain access to resources necessary to "succeed". However, due to the kinds of games that must be played to acquire these resources, the effect on the overall human ecology has been to deprive the traditional American people -- the folks who invented the airplane, computer, transistor, planar integrated circuit, etc., -- of the resources to express their historic ingenuity. As a consequence, fundamental technological innovation hasn't occurred for decades.
Seastead this.
Canada, the most similar economy to that of the US, does so well economically in part because it's had a huge tradition of immigrant entrepreneurship for decades.
Whereas the immigrant xenophobia in the US leads to incidents like a senior manager at a foreign car plant getting arrested for not having the right paperwork. If you treat foreign investors (who could put plants elsewhere) like that, what does it say to someone thinking of moving to the US to start a business?
Duh, how much more obvious does it get. They are self-selecting for determination.
Seriously, this is not scientific at all. This person selected himself from a pool that, in the aggregate, probably looks no different than than the US population in terms of intelligence, motivation, etc. He is probably in the top 10% or so in his native country. So obviously he would make a better entrepreneur.
To make a sweeping statement based on one anecdote is typical info-tainment.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
What abouut the other millions of immigrants that never become anything? If they truly were better entrepreneurs then there would be a hell of a lot of immigrants not driving cabs, sweeping floors and piicking fruit.
Besides what about like steve jobs or the guy who started total quality logistics? They were normal guys who went on to make millions and have a successful company and they werent immigrants.
Being very successful when you start with nothing is purely based on luck and nothing. Millions each year in america try to start their own business some fail before they start, some get going and then fail, some get close and some do it and then fewer still make it big. Has nothing to do with their nationality. It just has to do with they actually tried and that they were in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.
A magazine which reports on "finance, industry, investing, and marketing" reporting about how great it is to replace your CEO with an H1B visa carrier? I think this takes the cake.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
That's how they were able to get out from where they came.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Recently I was talking with someone from Ukraine, has a startup of applying software methods in building design (not a CAD system but buildings that can be modified like software or something like that, I didn't fully understand his concepts). He made a comment of people that leave their homelands are the ones that strive for innovation, creativity, trying new stuff, or whatever you want to call it. He said look at regions of the world, those with lots of immigrants and those without, the ones with lots of immigrants are the places with highest developments and latest innovations. Those countries where people tend to stay generation after generation are places with poorest economic conditions. I asked what was it like growing up in Ukraine which he said, "I didn't feel like I fit in, I don't like drinking."
Meanwhile another immigrant, from India working as a physicist at CalTech, mentioned how bad the H1-1B laws are which conversation went on to some people in California establishing a barge to house startups. These barges will be parked off the coast so startups can bring in immigrants and not deal with H1-1B and other work visa bureaucracies. He also mentioned companies are considering hospital ships so doctors can practice treatments that are highly politicized (i.e. stem cell). Wham, month later this became a slashdot article: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/05/08/1327222/nearly-150-companies-show-interest-in-the-tech-love-boat
mfwright@batnet.com
Immigrants have less to lose if the business fails. They can nearly always return home and start over with a blank slate. If you are a native and your business fails, where can you go to start over without your failure haunting you for life? Credit reporting agency reports accomplish the same thing as balls and chains.
I think non-immigrants are also more in fear of the red tape that they are very aware exists. Sometimes, people who are new to this country aren't aware of all the rules and regulations that can stumble small business owners.
Ticketmaster is still VAX VMS.
Here is a VAX still on the HP web site, and of course OpenVMS.
Sure if I wanted to sleep 10 to a room and have a physically injurious work life balance, I can eventually eek out a small chance at a marginally profitable business. All the while large portions of my money are given away to other private businesses like banks and the Fed that will use it to pay lobbyists to work against me with what I earned. It's only called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it. -Carlin
Where are the 20 stories of people who lost their homes and families going bankrupt because of the same bankers they are working to make rich?
Some of these immigrants come from abject poverty and practical slavery. It's no small wonder that they flourish under a merely oppressive regime. It does not mean that it should be idealized into a model of how we should be living our lives. You get one life, if it's spent in misery then you wasted it.
I feel "workers" is the more significant category.
Though, as pointed out, this observation is more anecdotal based on its sample size, I believe there is a valid point here. Initially, anyways, it is a simple (ie. harmonic oscillation) case of "alternation of generations".
Basically, one generation has things hard and needs to apply themselves to get somewhere. Attaining prosperity, the next generation gets things handed to them, and thus never understands the necessity to apply themselves. Add to that the factor of excessive residual (eg. monetary) wealth, and the alternation frequency period is no longer 1:1 generational. (I.e. one n'er-do-well generation may beget another.) This is a scenario for serious long-term degradation of industrial and ultimately civic infrastructure, general prosperity, and culture. Americans also seem to bring some uncanny nihilism (?) to the mix.
1) Why not take a risk when you have nothing to lose?
2) Folks who emmigrate in search for opportunity are bound to be driven.
TFA that I read simply says they do make better entrepreneurs, and gives examples of someone making more effort than I do. But it does not say why. (Why I suck, or why they don't, whatever: I'll take either answer.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Immigrants like Gheorghe don’t dawdle in their pursuit of better opportunities. They start at any available entry point in the job market, and then rapidly advance toward very ambitious personal goals. They keep pushing ahead, even if it means hauling plywood on a construction site or making small talk with whatever big shots they might be driving around in a borrowed limo."
Yeah, in other words, come to the US and work in wage slavery for a while first, you big enterpreneur, you. Forbes is just business press and wants cheap labor. Trying to put a positive spin on immigration fot ifs corporate readers who *adore* cheap labor. There's a huge lack of real statistics in the article. It's basically an immigrant pyramid scheme, if you think about it. Come here and work for peanuts as a janitor, but keep those big dreams. NO "DAWDLING", now!
The "planar" process was based on the original patent for the integrated circuit itself. That fundamental innovation was patented by Robert Noyce of Grinnell, Iowa. Hoerni was one of Noyce's "Congregation". My mistake was in conflating the refinement with the fundamental innovation.
Seastead this.
According to patent priority, the first computer to do actual electronic computation was in the agricultural school at Ames, IA. Moreover, that project was terminated and resourced diverted to WW II efforts like Colossus which utilized less advanced technology to achieve obvious elaborations such as stored programs. You're correct that various forms of computers had been conceived but reduction to practice had to await the kind of culture present in the US land grant colleges, much as actual controlled flight had to await some middle class tinkerers in Ohio.
Seastead this.
Because all do the same thing for the same reason. Leaving your country to seek a fortune elsewhere is also the sign of a quitter, a person looking for an easy way out, or someone who did something so terrible back home, he has to run. Cue bleeding hearts sheltering war criminals because they can't see that someone fleeing prosecution might actually being prosecuted for the right reasons.
That is not even counting the ones who were trafficked with promises of a job and end up a sex-worker, those people make good entrepreneurs as well you think?
The idea that a very wide label as immigrant means every person labeled by it is the same is insane. It is the core of racism, doesn't matter if it is so called positive or negative racism.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I most deliberately did not.
There is, however, something to be said for maintaining a strong middle class of economically independent yeoman as that does appear to be the source of scientific revolutions as well as technical revolutions.
Seastead this.
Around the year 1989 I was working as an Engineering Tech building and testing devices based on the 8051 embedded controller. Mostly access control systems. The company fell on financial hard times around 1990, I found myself dealing with unemployment. I was renting an apartment from my inlaws at the time, had two sons and one on the way. I hit the ground running looking for work, at that time the US was still designing and manufacturing products locally but the economic slowdown put the brakes on hiring anyone, no matter how good you were. So what did I do? I taught myself Solaris, CAD, hooked myself up as an Autodesk developer. Back in the 90s companies used to submit RFQs in the newspaper. I found one requesting a high speed large printer solution. I partnered with a company that provided such hardware, an high speed plotter. When I presented my company I had to come up with a name on the fly since I couldn't just be a DBA. I came up with Innovative Technology because the idea was that I'm gonna Innovate. The CTO of the company said "nice presentation, tell you what. Our current E size drawings take over 45 minutes to plot. We just won a contract to wire a major building in NYC. We need to cut the time down, can you help?" I replied that I could conduct a demo and plot out an E size drawing in less than 3 minutes. The CTO replied that If I could do that then they will offer me the contract. Well I called JDL, they hooked me up with another company, I wrote my code to integrate the plotter into their network, I bought a Sun Sparc 5 from a liquidator, ran my code on there. I installed PCNFS on the test workstation, connected to my printer driver, tested at the vendors site. I got the sample drawing done in 2.5 minutes. I was ready for the demo. I conducted the demo the following week, won the contract and the profit I earned bankrolled my business for a year. I grew the business, I added other vertical markets such as Point of Sale System, I even tought myself how to work on HP AS400 systems and landed a contract to provide system administration on a visiting nurse company's system. I ran my onw consulting gig for 6 years. The only reason why I sold it and gave it up was I had a young wife and family that I wanted to spend more time with. I put in over 140hrs /week into my business. With the experience I picked up I was able to get my resume out and get a new job in the IT Industry in one week. I used the money I saved to put down on my first house. Yes I miss running my own business, but when I ran my own business I missed my family. All in all it's been a great ride.
I'm not an immigrant. I'm the great grandson of an immigrant if that counts. The way I look at it was I needed to leverage my skills to provide for me and my family. The motivation wasn't to earn megabucks. I would hustle, save some money, if I had a surplus for the month I'd take a short vacation with the wife and kids
The short 3 day vacations wasn't enough though. Trust me, working 40hrs/week I see my family a lot more.
I think anyone here on Slashdot, if they had to, they could run their own consulting business.
Who knows, I may have to do it again someday.
Gee, THANX, Forbes for clearing that up for me. This one is straight from the "DUH!?! Institute:" Ready? Here it comes. Wait for it...
How about the "fact" that the lazy or disabled or unskilled or just plain f$ckin' stupid ones STAYED THE F$CK HOME?!? They were unable to or just plain couldn't be bothered to move thousands of miles with no means to go through the extensive rectal examination that is "emmigration ---> immigration???" Can't believe I have to explain this so often...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
If they took the time and effort to move all across the world, away from their family and friends, especially from a 2nd or 3rd world country with every little resources and their life experience in their disposal, they can risk a lot more than someone who's already situated here.
The US is a nation of settlers. The immigrants who came once the land was settled were qualitatively different in character.
If you can't understand the difference between a settler's relationship with natural laws and an immigrant's relationship with artificial laws as fundamentally differing skill sets, you don't understand anything about US history.
Seastead this.
My own experience is that "lucky breaks" come to those who seek them out and are willing to take risks, and under the right conditions, can capitalize on them.
Colonel, if you feel you haven't gotten your share of "lucky breaks", maybe you ought to try harder. It's amazing what can be accomplished if you try.
TFTY. Not to knock your argument, I agree with it. But I think in the form you presented, it is incomplete. You need an innate talent, and a drive to seek the opportunity. And the lucky break (which in great part is a factor of society and government), and then being at the right economic period (up or down depending on the nature of the lucky break), to capitalize it.
Coming from a dirt-poor country that was plagued for much of its existence by warlords, generalissimos, nepotism and a lack of the rule of law, you can work your ass off and be the next Sergey Brin/Einstein and still never get anywhere (if you are lucky, or robbed/killed at worst.)
Being in a developed country where the combination of government, the rule of law, society with developed institutions and a robust economy (even when in a recession), that gives you a fair, fighting chance AND the ability to mingle with like-minded people, AAAAAAAAND the opportunity to reap benefits proportional or greater than the effort put behind the plow.
The combination of all that is what makes success (and recovery from failures) a possibility.
Financial success is not 90% people skills. It's education or industry experience.
Not true. Purely anecdotal experience. When my family and I came from Nicaragua to the US in 1989, we paired with lady, also from Nicaragua to work from home making paper wraps for florists. This lady was the one with the contacts, and my family and I were the muscle. My family and I are/were decently educated and had a working knowledge of English (we couldn't speak it well yet, but we could read it.)
This other lady on the other hand, barely spoke any English, she could barely read in Spanish, and she needed a calculator to do simple math. She couldn't multiply without it. But you know what, she was the one getting the jobs, she had her own business. My family was one of the several local "offshore" employees she had in the Miami area. She would come and pick the finished product, pay us and bring more raw material, all while driving a dirt-poor car.
Penny earned, penny saved. She was already making an absurd amount of money. Some of her clients would berate her because of her lack of English language skills. It was painful to hurt to hear how she was treated, but she would simply shrug her shoulders. She would go on making sure everything was done and delivered on time, making contacts by simply knocking on flower shops' doors.
I don't know where she is now. Last time we saw her was in 1993. But she was already well off, this without significant reading ability in her native language, no English language skills, and almost zero-arithmetic skills. Zero education, and zero contacts.
Wherever she is, I hope she is still doing well.
http://cofcc.org/2012/04/how-asian-immigrants-get-preferential-treatment-when-starting-a-business/
How Asian immigrants get preferential treatment when starting a business
Partaking or Taking Over
by Stephanie Galonska
I’ve known about the Asian ownership of our gas stations, hotels and dunkin’ donuts for quite some time but I had no idea just how prevalent the ‘Asian ownership’ was until I drove from Des Moines, Iowa to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania some few years ago.
The Mississippi River had flooded again so I had to take a long detour around I-80 and it was there where I saw it. Imagine my surprise when I walked into an Antique store to ask for directions and saw, to my great dismay, an Indian from India. Now these weren’t Antiques from India, they were American and European Antiques. Needless to say, I didn’t ask for any directions. The next Town I stopped in only had one gas station and guess what? It was owned by a Chinese person.
Throughout my trip, a pattern was emerging. Everywhere I stopped, no matter how small the Town, an Asian could be found owning something. How did this come to be?
Well, we all know it came slow and long ago but as far as I’m concerned, it came mostly in 1990 when our “Leaders” enacted IMMACT which gives us this: “under the new provisions; increases in the proportion of immigrants coming from Asia, with a corresponding decrease in the numbers from northern and western Europe” [1] All one needs to do is look around to see that that’s true.
Add that to all the Government and Business Sponsored Minority Privilege and what do ya get? According to BUSINESS.COM, you get “over 50 percent of all U.S. minority-owned businesses with sales exceeding $1 million are owned by Asian-Americans.” [2]
How did that fifty percent Asian ownership happen in what seems to be, so quickly? Once again, according to BUSINESS.COM, Bank of America and its special program called the “Minority and Women Prequalification Program” [2] helps them but they’re far from the only ones.
BUSINESS.COM goes on to mention how Asians can “meet prospective customers in person at one of the regional procurement events sponsored by The US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce (USPAACC).” [2]
Now who supports USPAACC? According to them, just about everybody. One Government Department they mention is The Social Security Administration [3] and I wonder, do they mean this: “Greta is the admissions coordinator in a federally-subsidized senior citizens housing facility in the San Francisco Bay area. She remarks that, when one of her tenants, an immigrant from Taiwan whom we will call Wen, told her that he had just passed his citizenship test, “I was
congratulating and welcoming him, but he laughed and said, ‘Now they can’t take my [welfare] money away.’” [4]
I find it worthy to remind us all that in that quote are two significant points of interest and they are “federally-subsidized” and “[welfare]“. Immigrants were supposed to support their own elderly immigrant family members when they brought them here but no, once again, our “leaders” changed that Law for them too.
Back to the USPAACC. Who pays for them? We all do. Aside from the numerous government agencies they name, they have plenty of corporate sponsors too. Lockheed Martin, Frito Lays, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, Verizon, it just goes on and on. It’s one thing for Businesses to give to the Community but it’s discrimination to set aside business opportunities and/or funding for minorities because they’re “minorities”. Minorities have done nothing for America except be non-white and/or female and that’s just not a contribution worthy of any “recognition” or the
Seastead this.
Having family and a good number of friends as immigrants I've noticed two significant patterns:
1) Arrive in the US and take fairly menial work due to lack of education or language abilities. They're extremely frugal and manage to save a good deal of money. They work hard, but smartly moving up to the point that they start a small business which leads to further success. Many get involved in real estate investment further increasing income. By the time they're middle-aged they're living comfortably. They tend to pool resources with family members to increase odds of success.
2) Arrive in the US and take menial work for the same reasons. Never become motivated enough to move beyond low-paying employment. They manage to get by, some even to the point that they eventually buy their own home, but never really thrive.
This group tends to branch off into two subsets. There are those who are extremely frugal and manage to accumulate a little bit of money by the time they hit retirement. Then there's the other group that is less careful with money and becomes overly reliant on family members or social security in retirement. But a consistent theme with this group in general is that although they might live within communities comprised of the same ethnic group they tend to be more isolated and less likely to pool resources.
I've noticed another essential dynamic is how immigrant raise their kids. In both cases, but especially the first group, they stress education as essential. They don't tolerate anything less than excellence. This tends to lead to their children going good schools. And because their parents have instilled more pragmatic tendencies in them they tend to favor careers that lead to better employment and higher incomes. Nowadays that means finance, but when I was younger engineering, computer science and medicine tended to be popular. Those who don't end up in top schools still tend to have that work ethic instill in them and generally thrive, enjoying a higher standard of living than their parents.
Amongst the parents who didn't get involved in their children's education, who didn't instill that work ethic, their kids tend to struggle later in life not being any better off than the parents were. More often than not, they end up screwing themselves but not having clear long-term plans and goals.
The interesting thing is that I've generally found foreigners to be far more optimistic about opportunities in America than Americans themselves. They're a lot more willing to sacrifice than Americans are. I've been surprised many a time by friends and family who've manage to save so much money with such relatively low incomes.
Controlled flight was the fundamental invention, not the mode of takeoff.
Seastead this.
The entitlement thought of many of the US's population prevents us from our own success. Being your own boss and then employing others to work for you takes discipline and hard work. A business owners who starts from virtually nothing but an idea and makes the dream a reality has a stronger grasp on the value of a company and the people who work within its doors. This isn't to say that people in the US have no drive, but when the world flip flops, many just throw up their hands and quit.
Just look at the number of people who just quit paying their loans because they were under water, so many that it's destroying our economy. A home is more than an investment, it is something that needs love and care and needs constant attention, and just quitting when times are tough is not the right way to do it. Too many feel entitled to walk away from a house and loan and don't expect to receive the ass end of the consequences. Building a business takes the same work and pride, and those that really understand struggle make some of best business owners.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Someone who is willing to take the risk of moving to a different country is also probably willing to take on the risk of starting a business.
I went to the comments expecting lots of sour grapes and skepticism, and I was not disappointed. Or rather I was, because the naysayers who point out that being a successful entrepreneur is not guaranteed, and would rather have a nice, safe job guaranteed by their government, are dragging the rest of us down. They criticize hedge fund managers and bankers, but when Buffett comes along and says, "Hey! The 1% pay too few taxes, so here's my plan to fix it!" they don't suspect that guy. People like Buffett who already "made it" don't want any competition; any roadblocks they put in the way of the "rich" are really to keep the middle and lower classes from joining their club. You don't think Buffett already knows how to dodge higher taxes? If he wants to be "charitable", he could just send an extra fat check right to the IRS and exhort his peers to do the same. The Federal Reserve and the IRS were created to keep the millionaires club exclusive.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'm starting to subscribe to there being a genetic racial component to immigrant success.
Here in northern California, you simply cannot advance in technology without having fluency in Swahili and Spanish that all the successful startups seem to speak.
Immigrating to another country is risky and tough. Lazy, complacent, timid, and dependent are more likely to stay put. Therefore immigrant population is likely to be biased towards selt-starters, risk-takers, ambitious people. They are enterpreneural material.
They get first service at any government facility
They get grants to start their own business
They get free education
And I have to fucking pay for it all while accomplishing the same god damed goals
That doesn't mean that everybody who stays home is lazy or incompetent, it just means that the people who are lazy do stay home, even if their mom doesn't have a basement, and the incompetent people might want to emigrate but can't do it successfully. Of course, the rich trustafarians also often hit the road, but you're going to find them hanging out in the bars and coffee shops in the cool cities, and maybe they'll turn into successful art gallery owners or software designers or artists, or start interesting restaurants if they're from places where that works.
Also there's the immigrant family connection thing. Back when I was in college, there was a local restaurant owned by Greek guy (as were most restaurants in upstate New York.) Johnnie said he wasn't really a good cook, he was really a good welder, but when he moved over to the US, every Greek had an uncle or cousin who worked in a restaurant, and you didn't need much English, so that's the job you got to start with, and if you were ok at it you stayed in the business. WIth a lot of the Mexicans in California, many of them came up here with connections from somebody else in their village, whether it was restaurants or farming, and there used to be towns in the Central Valley where the second language was Spanish (English was third; the main language might be some Oaxacan or Mayan dialect), just as there are now areas where there are a lot of Hmong or Sikhs or whoever farming.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
One special case I've seen for immigrants to the US is people from former Communist countries in Europe and the Asian parts of the former Soviet Union. People often had a strong technical education, but many of them couldn't have a decent life in their own country because their own country was a mess. Before the Fall, it was a mess they couldn't leave, and afterwards it was a mess they could leave.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...when you steal someone else's work
Many Americans, take for GRANTED the freedom they (still) have in this country. Many on the outside looking in, especially those from former soviet socialist countries have come here to "make it big". In other words, many Americans don't have the work ethic because we are fat dumb & lazy, expect everything given to us, and complain about everything.
It does not take a genius to figure that out, or a stray example. An immigrant is one who is willing to leave behind his family, friends, culture, language, country to seek out his fortune in a foreign country. It is a similar psychological profile to an entrepreneur who is willing take take risks, and give up a stable day job to pursue a dream.