@dirtyoldtown got me wondering about buy-now-pay-later service Klarna, and I found more than I was expecting.

https://mefi.social/@dirtyoldtown/115442625013754652

Back in 2015, Swedish Minister of Enterprise Mikael Damberg referred to five Swedish companies as the "five unicorns." He meant it in a flattering way. Those companies were Spotify, Klarna, Mojang, Skype and King.com.

Skype is gone; Spotify has platformed Joe Rogan and separately been criticized as a platform for money-laundering; Klarna is in the business of getting Gen-Z into debt over bagatelles and profiting from their disorganization, and King.com takes in billions with casual-gaming micro-transactions.

That's ... a surprisingly seedy lineup. Coming from Sweden. I'm surprised, anyway.

It's like reading a Carnegie-era paean to the industrial might of Pittsburgh, only to find out later that it was really mostly pawnbrokers.