The problem with growing up in the lucky country
Australia is one of the best places in the world to grow up... and I've started to wonder if that's the problem.
It ticks just about every box. We're blessed with natural resources, plenty of land, safety and some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet.
But the more time I spend thinking about it, the more I think all that comfort comes with a bit of a hidden cost.
The bar is honestly pretty low
If you're born here and lucky enough to get a decent education, the bar for "success" is honestly pretty low (all things considered, relative to the rest of the world).
Granted, plenty of people have real struggles, and I don't want to be dismissive of that.
House prices and the cost of living are causing a lot of anxiety for young people right now, and that's very real.
But the pathway to doing reasonably well is still fairly clear:
- Get an education, and a pretty good one, made accessible by HECS
- Get into a good job, in a market with less competition because it's quite hard for people to move here
- Ride the corporate ladder for a few decades
Sure, AI is starting to disrupt that ladder. But relatively speaking, if you work a little harder than your average colleague and put in a bit more effort, you can still do quite well.
For a lot of people, that's a great life (no shade at all).
The opportunity cost of trying something different is huge
Here's the thing: because the default path is so comfortable, stepping off it can "cost" you a lot.
That's opportunity cost. Every risk you take gets measured against a very nice safe option, so leaving it looks expensive, and a bit mad.
Compare that to places like the US, Southeast Asia or Israel, where the dynamic often runs the other way.
If you don't give it a red hot crack, you'll really struggle, and in some cases you won't survive.
So people try, and trying is far more encouraged and celebrated.
Here, it's flipped. The cost of trying is the high one, so most people don't.
Where tall poppy syndrome comes in
I think this is a big part of where tall poppy syndrome comes from.
When the comfortable path is the norm, anyone who steps off it to go after something bigger sticks out.
The reaction usually isn't hostile to your face. It's more behind your back... "what's that person doing?"
And sometimes it's people quietly rooting for you not to succeed, or being a little too keen to hear about your struggles.
It's a culture that's very happy with "good", and a little suspicious of anyone reaching for "great".
There's also a casualness to Aussie culture that feeds into it. "Mate, just chill out."
Success here is often pictured as the person cruising, nailing their work-life balance and chilling by the beach, not the one grinding and working hard on something ambitious.
Who actually takes the risks
I meet a lot of really smart people, and plenty of them never really push themselves, because they never really had to.
The ones who do take risks often have something in common.
They usually come from a background where their parents had to struggle, or they came here from overseas and brought that mindset with them.
They didn't grow up assuming the comfortable path would always be there, so stepping off it doesn't feel as scary.
We don't celebrate the builders
Part of the problem is who we hold up as role models.
Our leaders and the people we celebrate are very rarely people who've built businesses. More often, it's politicians or people born into lucky families.
So culturally, taking a big swing just isn't something young Aussies see or get exposed to very often.
The brain drain
The result is that a lot of our smartest people end up leaving.
They head to places like San Francisco, New York, Dubai or Singapore, where ambition and hard work are celebrated rather than side-eyed.
And with the recent conversations around capital gains tax, I'm hearing that pull come up more and more.
The irony
The same safety net that makes it so costly to leave the comfortable path also makes it incredibly cheap to fail.
If you take a swing in Australia and it doesn't work out, the worst case is usually that you go back to a good job, in a safe country, with a bit more experience than everyone else.
That's about as asymmetric as a bet gets.
So the lucky country might actually be the best place in the world to take a risk... we've just been taught to see it the other way around.