Given the relentless Internet hype in Britain, researchers wanted to see if dreams of a dynamic new economy and overnight riches had stirred the hitherto-dormant British entrepreneurial spirit. The poll found only one in eight is envious of newly minted dot-com millionaires, which is surprising for a country with a wildly popular national lottery, and of the 20 percent of Britons that own stocks, only 2 percent invest in Internet companies. The survey polled 2,000 Britons broadly representative of the adult population, according to the researchers. The pollsters say British indifference to the Net isn't the result of a lack of familiarity. But Fitzpatrick said a growing unease with the unholy trinity of greed, globalism, and technology also plays a part.
People here loathe that stuff.
In addition, the inequities between rich and poor in America, which represent the brave new economy for a lot of Britons, clash with European ideals of social justice and welfare. I even know venture capitalists who say how distasteful it is, how ugly the greed is, which is a strange thing for a venture capitalist to say. Pollsters said they hadn't heard of similar surveys being conducted in the United States but nonetheless predicted similar results. If you are in Iowa you read about it in the papers and it has the same general effect as reading about lottery winners. It s just like California in the 1840s.