Pavel Durov debunked 7 myths about the USA from Yuri Dudya's film "Silicon Valley"

Not so long ago, a film by the famous Russian blogger Yuri Dudya "Silicon Valley" appeared on the web. In it, the author communicated in the United States with entrepreneurs who did not spare colors, describing the advantages of the "country of huge opportunities". Pavel Durov, the creator of the VKontakte social network and the popular Telegram messenger, decided to comment on the blogger's new work.

Pavel immediately noted that he personally knows many of Yuri's interlocutors and has no doubt that, praising life in the USA, they are somewhat lying. In personal conversations, these people often complain that it is difficult for them to live in American society and that they even regret that they chose this country for emigration.

Durov also explained the hypocrisy of the participants in the interview with Yuri Dudya by the fact that they already think and behave like real Americans. In the USA, it is customary to avoid sharp corners in conversations on camera and concentrate on positive moments. In order to warn the misled people, Pavel considered it necessary to debunk the seven main myths about Silicon Valley, which Dud presented as the best place in the world for those who work in IT.

The United States has the image of a country of freedom, but this is a deception. In fact, the United States is a tough police state that has long broken the world record for the number of prisoners in prisons. The percentage of those serving time here is 10 times higher than in Finland, Germany or the Netherlands.

You may think that this does not concern you, but at least one of Yuri's interlocutors suffered due to unfounded accusations and became the object of surveillance by law enforcement. The creator of Telegram himself also faced harassment from the FBI — this happened in 2016 during a business visit to San Francisco.

The United States is a country with inefficient and unreasonably expensive medicine. That is why many emigrants prefer to travel to Eastern European countries for treatment. The inhabitants of the country themselves cannot be called a healthy nation — the United States has the largest number of people suffering from obesity in the world. Most likely, in addition to a low food culture with a predominant fast food, the lack of proper control over food producers and constant stress plays a role.

Silicon Valley is not a cultural and social center, but several villages where life is quite monotonous. San Francisco, located nearby, can also not be called the capital of the arts, but the city has a very high crime rate and a lot of homeless people. Pavel Durov mentioned that this is the only city of all where he was the victim of an attack on the street right in broad daylight.

Of all the developed countries in the world, the USA has the lowest quality of secondary education. Of the 79 countries studied by experts, America ranks only 38th in terms of the quality of teaching mathematics in schools. Almost all the winners of the Olympiads in mathematics and computer science, which Americans like to be proud of, are ethnic Chinese who studied in schools in China and came to the country recently.

But even the "brain drain" does not save America — the number of victories at various scientific championships in the United States is much lower than in China and Russia. So not all the smart ones have left the country yet and we still have something to answer the Americans.

The USA is a country with very high taxes. Therefore, successful residents of Silicon Valley give more than half of their income to the state. Also, this country is the only one in the world that does not hesitate to demand payment of taxes from its citizens living outside its borders. Many people think that a passport of a citizen of the United States is a great privilege, but, in fact, it is a serfdom that is always with you.

You can try to renounce US citizenship, but as the sad experience of Oleg Tinkov shows, this does not always work. In Eastern European countries, taxes are much lower, and in some countries of the Persian Gulf, for example, there are no taxes at all in the UAE.

It is expensive not only to live in Silicon Valley, but also to run your own business. Entrepreneurs working in the field of high technology prefer not to contact employees who live next to them. Local programmers are expensive, spoiled and not always mandatory due to the abundance of offers and the lack of opportunity to focus on one thing.

Expat entrepreneurs prefer to deal with developers from Eastern Europe, and remotely. This, by the way, is also not so simple because of the 10-hour time difference. In a word, it is easier to run an IT business sitting somewhere in Europe or warm India.

The American market is not the best place to develop an IT business. Pavel Durov believes that it is overheated, over-regulated and not too extensive. This is true — after all, it makes up only 4% of the world, but at the same time it is pretentious and burdened with ambitions. Yes, 10-20 years ago, large-scale projects were best implemented from Silicon Valley. Back then, the US was a single Internet market and new products such as YouTube and Instagram were best launched from there.

But in recent years, everything has changed radically and the most brilliant success stories in social media are no longer associated with the United States. For example, you can take at least TikTok with its 800 million users or Telegram, which is used by 400 million people. The largest open Internet market today is India.

A week ago, the Indian educational startup Byju reached a capitalization of $ 10 billion. The same Telegram has the most users from India, and Pavel is glad that his headquarters is located near the country that has become the center of the global IT industry.

Summing up, Pavel Durov said that the United States cannot be considered the best country either for living or for doing business. Therefore, having a choice, wishing to leave Russia or other Eastern European countries, it is better to consider other, more worthy options. In Northern and Central Europe, human rights and freedoms are protected much better than overseas, and the countries of Asia show the highest economic growth today.

As for the United States, this country still retains some attractiveness for established businessmen, and then only at the expense of available money from local investors. We can say that moving to the USA to develop your IT projects is like buying an asset at the very peak of its value.