Most Britons don't care at all about the Internet economy and dot.com millionaires, according to a new opinion poll out of London.
An overwhelming 93 percent of Britons would refuse to work at a dot-com business if given the chance and 97 percent wouldn’t give up their jobs to develop a dot-com idea, according to a poll published on Monday by the Financial Times and market research giant Mori (Market & Opinion Research International).
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.
But instead of finding undercurrents of ambition and e-envy, the poll uncovered reservoirs of e-indifference and skepticism.
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. According to the poll, 52 percent of ABC1s –- a British term for the most desirable marketing demographic -- have access to the Internet, which is more than the 27 percent that read a broadsheet newspaper.
Stephen Fitzpatrick, a London Internet consultant, said tech-stock jitters and high-profile failures like Boo.com are major reasons Britons are reluctant to work and invest in the Internet.
But Fitzpatrick said a growing unease with the unholy trinity of greed, globalism, and technology also plays a part.
"The full-blown libertarian futurism that’s propagated by (Wired magazine) is not well received in this country," he said. "People here loathe that stuff."
Fitzpatrick said Britons see some Internet businesses like Kozmo.com as neo-Victorian, where the domestic help is contracted out instead of living in-house.
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.
"The greed economy is seen as distasteful," he said. "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 there is dot-com envy, it’s going to be here (in the Bay Area)," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Research Corporation, a major pollster based in San Francisco. "But I don’t think it’s widespread nationwide. If you are in Iowa you read about it in the papers and it has the same general effect as reading about lottery winners."
Frank Newport, executive editor of the Gallup Poll, said that even though Gallup’s weekly surveys of American attitudes show that "plastics" has been replaced by "computers" as general career advice, getting rich quick in an IPO is not a high priority.
"Striking it rich with stock options is not the No. 1 goal of most Americans," he said. "It’s just like California in the 1840s. Thousands joined the Gold Rush, but most Americans stayed home."
