Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy • Hacker News Board

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#241

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Sep 29, 2016, 11:57 PM UTC

clock_tower wrote: post #240

stepanhruda wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man you're mixing up so many concepts. GDP is product - what value you produce during the year. Nothing is produced during a traffic jam. If you want to see accumulated wealth and climate taken into account, compare quality of life.

Wikipedia describes three ways of modeling GDP: production, income, and expenditure. A traffic jam means more production of fuel (and vehicles, accounting for wear and tear), more income for fuel producers and mechanics, and higher expenditures (fuel, wear and tear, and radio ads); GDP rises on all three measures. Free time does not contribute to GDP; neither does use of accumulated capital.

Less free time means less demand for services catering to people's free time, and consequently less production of, income from, and expenditures on such services.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#242

Post by clock_tower » Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

luispedrocoelho wrote: post #167

clock_tower wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi. Remember good GDP versus bad GDP; a traffic jam increases GDP, but isn't anything particularly worth buying. Accumulated capital (like Notre Dame and the Louvre) doesn't show up in GDP either, an…

"Accumulated capital (like Notre Dame and the Louvre) doesn't show up in GDP either, and if anything tends to lower it." Notre Dame and the Louvre are a couple of the things that make Paris the single biggest tourist destination in the world, from which it derives a huge amount of GDP. The French tourist officials make sure to monetize the Louvre for all they can. * "Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that…

Perhaps I should've given less dramatic examples than Notre Dame and the Louvre: stone cities, stone bridges, houses that have been inhabited since the 16th century, that sort of thing -- things we don't have in the US.

I can't comment on the rest of the US, but I'm seriously considering emigrating to Europe at some point, for the sake of long-term stability. The US might be in a very bad situation 300 years from now; I doubt that France, Germany, or the northern parts of Spain and Italy will.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#243

Post by jhbadger » Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 8:02 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #144

pjmlp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH was also the home of Niklaus Wirth and all his research in safe systems programming languages with Modula-2(Lillith), Oberon(Native Oberon, EthOS), Active Oberon (BlueOS) and the commercial descendent Component Pascal.

In the 2.4kbps times (.br speeds at the time) I'd print the Modula-3 manuals and have fun at home. And then I discovered I was late to the party and things were slowing down for those languages. I wish m3 had caught on. Really liked it.

There is a lot of Modula/Oberon feel to Google's Go. Rob Pike seems to be a fan.