Europe is poor so should live within its means

marketty

We're headed back to the middle ages if Malaysia is being held up as an example of how to run a country, just this week they've handed over a man to the Saudis for possible execution for tweeting about Mohammed.
We have a lot of problems in Europe thankfully religion isn't really one of them. Anymore.

Wibbs

blatantrereg wrote: »

Outsourcing caused the Dark Ages.

Rome outsourced its military.

It always had pretty much. It grew on the back of outsourcing by making others 'Roman'. Quite a number of Emperors weren't Roman, even Italian. I'd disagree that outsourcing caused the dark ages(tm) or the fall of rome. Neither did Christianity, though Gibbon would likely disagree with me. I would say the fall came from increasing cultrual complexity, social stagnation, taxes(and their collectors) and environmental stresses. In any event only the western empire fell, the eastern empire continued. It continued because it adapted, it became less complex and less socially rigid and reinvented itself. Even replacing Latin as the state language for Greek. Good sense given Greek was the common language of all Rome even at it's height.

megafan

Wibbs wrote: »

we have Russia on our doorstep and their natural resources are off the scale. QUOTE]






Great we're ok so Russia will save us with all their natural resources!.... eh... now all we need is money to pay for them???:rolleyes:

Wibbs

megafan wrote: »

Great we're ok so Russia will save us with all their natural resources!.... eh... now all we need is money to pay for them???:rolleyes:

Annnnd? Your point being M? You always pay for natural resources, though it's a lot cheaper to shift them from somewhere relatively 'close by'. And I hate to break it to you, Europe has money. Don't let Greece apparently going belly up throw you.

Nevertheless your assertion that "Europe has little in the way of natural resources" is just a tad... well wrong. As a location Europe does alright in various metal ores(like I said just one mine in Ireland has the 5th highest production of zinc in the world) and there are still large deposits out there. Europe does well in various minerals, coal, bauxite and some oil and quite a bit of natural gas, though as Yahew points out getting it out may be more a political/environmental problem than a practical one. Going forward? On the renewable energy front Europe is well placed. Sea, wind and sun are all in abundance depending where you look(even geothermal). And the northern European nations have an abundance of clean fresh water, which in time may well become something akin to the 'new oil'. And that's before we get to other resources like fishing, good farming land, a highly educated population(one of the highest in the world, if not the highest) etc. There is quite the spread of resources out there.

Yahew

Wibbs, I am a bit tired of this quoting each other back and forth. This is my last reply.

1) China has 500 million peasants willing to work. The one child policy was designed to stop poverty, it can be revoked. You are claiming two contradictory things - there is a huge "underclass" ( actually a hard working peasant class) and thats a huge problem, and there is a huge problem with future labour shortages. Thats absurd.
2) They can change the 1 child policy if they need to. Clearly they are not worried. see 1.
3) I don't need to read up on the Han. Its an largely homogenous ethnic group. Mandarin speakers are 800 million of that anyway, but the different languages of the HAN do not lead to separatist movements. The place has been united for centuries. India on the other hand has massive ethnic, sectarian, language, and caste differences. It is also 2-3 times poorer per capita than China is now.
4) It is a major fallacy to suggest that rising populations always lead to economic growth - you persist in this fallacy all the time.
5) The result of the black death, as it happened, was an increase in per-capita income for the poor in Europe.

So as the one child population policy kicks in, the cities in the economic zones need to get more workers, but there are still surpluses in the hinterlands, and will be for a generation or two, which gives the Chinese time to balance the population by removing the restriction. They brought it in precisely because they thought higher populations lead to poverty.

so most of the headline facts you believe are wrong, or reversible. And while I am sure that India can do better than now, this

As China's population shifts and cheap isn't so cheap anymore, where would you look for a large and growing young workforce that is relatively well educated? In many ways more educated than the average Chinese per head and significantly more fluent in english, the language of the web/biz. India for all it's current issues may IMHO will be a better bet for a time.

Is way optimistic. India seems to educate it's elites well and everyone else badly. The chinese literacy is 92%. India is 66%.

Wibbs

Yahew wrote: »

1) China has 500 million peasants willing to work. The one child policy was designed to stop poverty, it can be revoked. You are claiming two contradictory things - there is a huge "underclass" ( actually a hard working peasant class) and thats a huge problem, and there is a huge problem with future labour shortages. Thats absurd.

The 'hard working peasant class' are aging at the same rate. There is and will be simply fewer people available of working/graduate/productive age, across the board. No matter where they look.

4) It is a major fallacy to suggest that rising populations always lead to economic growth - you persist in this fallacy all the time.
5) The result of the black death, as it happened, was an increase in per-capita income for the poor in Europe.

Nope I am however saying that falling populations tend to lead to economic slowdown, especially if that economy is based in manufacturing. The black death effect led to costs going up. Food prices went through the roof. What saved Europe was empire building and the cash that came from that.

Is way optimistic. India seems to educate it's elites well and everyone else badly. The chinese literacy is 92%. India is 66%.

Oh I agree, India has a lot of issues and they're in dire need of the political will to fix them.

Sindri

Statistics would I think point to European decline in some areas I would think, but as Wibbs pointed out it would not be unreasonable to believe Europe has many advantages and benefits over it's far eastern counterparts.

Demographics would also point to the ascension of India and China. 75% of Indians live in rural areas. Now that would create quite a problem for cities and their ability to accommodate for these practically peasants but also shows a huge untapped workforce that will eventually move to cities and participate in the growing manufacturing sector. India also has a rising population while China's is in decline.

As well as that though, the amount of scientific papers Chinese scientist's publish has risen phenomenally in the last decade and it will soon overtake America in that regard next year. So to presume the Chinese cannot innovate is just wrong.

I think if you look at the underlying statistics, China and India have many many advantages in their favour and to disregard them would be folly as some people seem intent on doing.

AeoNGriM

Europe is poor so should live within its means

Absolutely true. Everyone should be living within their means, regardless of where they live.

Then again, who the fcuk am I to be telling the rest of you what to do with your monies?

If only I could steal me some of that Jew gold............

Wibbs

Sindri wrote: »

As well as that though, the amount of scientific papers Chinese scientist's publish has risen phenomenally in the last decade and it will soon overtake America in that regard next year.

Well yes, however there is more than the sniff of quantity over quality. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110720/full/475267a.html This is from a Chinese chap at the coalface a professor in both a Chinese uni and American one.
For the mobile readers;

"It found that between 1999 and 2008, China's citation share rose from almost nothing to 4%. However, this is dwarfed by the 30% share held by the United States. And although China ranks second to the United States in terms of publication output, the report found that, in 2008, it ranked only joint ninth in citation numbers. This suggests that China's dramatic proliferation of scientific papers does not reflect quality research. China still has a long way to go to become a major player in the scientific arena and, to do so, I believe it must address these key areas."

So to presume the Chinese cannot innovate is just wrong.

God no, certainly not. They're among the most innovative cultures this world has ever seen, in bursts anyway.

Sindri

Wibbs wrote: »

Well yes, however there is more than the sniff of quantity over quality. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110720/full/475267a.html This is from a Chinese chap at the coalface a professor in both a Chinese uni and American one.
For the mobile readers;

"It found that between 1999 and 2008, China's citation share rose from almost nothing to 4%. However, this is dwarfed by the 30% share held by the United States. And although China ranks second to the United States in terms of publication output, the report found that, in 2008, it ranked only joint ninth in citation numbers. This suggests that China's dramatic proliferation of scientific papers does not reflect quality research. China still has a long way to go to become a major player in the scientific arena and, to do so, I believe it must address these key areas."

God no, certainly not. They're among the most innovative cultures this world has ever seen, in bursts anyway.

You remind me Mr. Wibbs (it would be brilliant if your surname actually was Wibbs) of a teacher I once had. Did you by any chance ever teach Classical Studies?

blatantrereg

It's difficult to qualify research in general. The most blatant dodgy publications are easy enough to spot, if you scratch the surface. There are some that are the equivalent of those emails you get offering you a degree without studying anything. I received a mail from a journal in an unrelated discipline saying they wanted to publish a recent conference paper of mine. They mentioned the costs of publication would need to be covered my end. The journal was in a field only vaguely related to my paper. Looking it up showed that it did happen to be a Chinese publisher. They had journals in a number of fields. Almost all the authors appeared to be Chinese, and there were few references to the published papers - I think mostly from similar publications.

Even the most reputable journals can contain questionable material though. Academia is pretty political in general really, and can be somewhat cliquey. The names on the papers can often have a greater bearing on what gets published than the content.

Aside from that, it's not unusual for academia to lag behind industry in technical fields. All in all, numbers of publications, citations etc are not terribly meaningful imo - beyond how they advance an individual's academic career, or influence the funding an institution receives. But really the proof is in the pudding - the actual creation is what is significant. I'd rather have developed one proven, useful, marketable product or technology, than to have 100 meaningless papers and patents that never get used in the real world.

Wibbs

Sindri wrote: »

You remind me Mr. Wibbs (it would be brilliant if your surname actually was Wibbs) of a teacher I once had. Did you by any chance ever teach Classical Studies?

Teach? I barely have a leaving cert S. And I do mean barely.