Tuesday, June 13, 2006

An important question for New Zealand to ask itself

Hattip: Slashdot
"The controversial genius developer/writer/entertainer Paul Graham writes an insightful piece on Why Startups Condense in America. Here's the skinny: "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state, the universities are better, you can fire people, work is less identified with employment, it is not too fussy, it has a large domestic market, it has venture funding, and it has dynamic typing for careers. Inquire for details within."
Given that New Zealand's future prosperity lies in capturing a healthy slice of the technology and finance wave, how do we compare on the above factors?  Should we be trying to capture the innovation of small startup firms, or looking to lure larger more established players?  Or do you disagree entirely and see New Zealand's GDP growing from other areas - if so what?
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5 comments:

Unknown said...

I realise that in New Zealand both most of our employment and most of our revenue *currently comes from SME's. The question is whether strategically that is a good position to continue to assert into the future.

One of New Zealand's problems is that it consistently fails to grow its SMEs to that next level where they can actually grow and bring in export dollars. The circulation of funds within an economy can only help to sustain us for so long...

I agree whole heartedly with the NZ tourism comments - but in keeping it sustainable this probably means an eventual plateau in growth for this segment - which is why I see that we need to capture the finance and/or tech markets for ultimate long term growth. Or we will see our clean / green lifestyle disappear.

Omni said...

I'd gladly give you some of our start-ups if you'll give us your system of representation; in America, if you're a minority that can't persuade some of the majority to vote for your candidates, you're out of luck.

Unknown said...

Ah yes but the danger of our system of representation is that the Government is always going to be radically swayed from the majority opinion (which can be a good thing depending on your opinion I suppose).

Omni said...

Er... don't the majority elect the majority of candidates?

Unknown said...

Omni - yes but the (potential) problem in the MMP system is that the coalitions formed will typically be skewed *away* from the majority decision of the candidates.

In our latest results an approx 75% majority coalition could have been formed by the "middle" 2 parties. But instead one party has formed a coalition with others that are further "left" to form a Government, so skewing the result *away* from the majority decision.