Social costs of failures

Very good article from Bruno Giussani about the intro speech of Clay Shirky and some thoughts about a possible correlation of open source development and social costs of entrepreneurial failure in specific countries. 

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… about the social costs of failure. For example, in the debate about entrepreneurship in Europe the argument is constantly put forth that the social cost of failing as an entrepreneur in Europe is significantly higher than in the US. Following Clay's argument, European governments would achieve better results fighting this ingrained social stigma (reducing the cost of failure) rather than encouraging entrepreneurship through other means. And we both started wondering whether there may be some correlation between the social costs of failure in a given country and the level of open-source activism there. For example, Germany is very active in open-source, more than almost any other place in the world: could it be that many innovative/entrepreneurial Germans have found in open-source an outlet to invest their energy and try out their ideas (any idea) at a much lower failure cost?

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Very interesting thought. If i see how many good ideas are not started by young people because of the "social costs" for a potential failure then it might be really a much better idea for the government to fight these costs.