I found a recent article at MSN to be a fascinating read. Is it possible that our friends and neighbors in Europe really see capitalism so differently. Sitting in Silicon Valley among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs this is hard to believe.
Europe could use more people like Ehssan Dariani. The 26-year-old entrepreneur runs a hot Internet start-up called studiVZ—Europe’s fastest-growing social network for university students. Since setting up in a cheap Berlin loft only last fall, he’s already hired 25 people. Yet when Dariani looks back at his high-school days, a decade ago in the west German city of Kassel, he remembers his teachers warning against exactly what he’s doing. “They taught us the market economy was a dangerous wilderness full of risk and bankruptcy,” Dariani says. “We never learned how prices affect supply and demand, only about evil managers and unjust wages.” If he’d listened to his teachers, he’d be among the vast majority of German students who dream of becoming civil servants or fitting into the comfortable hierarchy of a traditional corporation. Instead he set out and created some desperately needed jobs.
