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Britain Is a Developing Country

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Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#181

Post by fmajid »

aetherson wrote: post #89
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the UK going to regress to developing world status? Lexically, tats an oxymoron, if you are regressing you are clearly not developing. Empirically, living standards have been falling in UK for a decade, while developing countries are developing. Clearly, eventually they will intersect. Logically, you seem to claim that a developed economy cannot collapse no matter how badly it's mismanaged?

I think that if the UK, for example, is overthrown by/elects a Maoist government or something equally crazy, then sure, they could flush their economy down the toilet. I don't think that "being out of the EU" is in the same category.

Don’t have to be left-wing. Liz Truss did an amazing job of flushing the country down the drain, specially considering half her short tenure was concerned with the death of the queen.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#182

Post by Shawnj2 »

sdsd wrote: post #27
retrac98 wrote: post #20

Britain isn’t a developing country, it’s a regressing one. Public services and government that used to work well now don’t, and opportunities that everyday folk used to have they now don’t. It’s still a nice place if you’re in a good career, but the long term prospects don’t look good.

>Britain isn’t a developing country, it’s a regressing one. There's so much research on developing countries, but I find deteriorating countries more interesting. There are many countries that used to be first world, and simply are not anymore. Argentina is the classic example, South Africa is the most heated example.

Afghanistan is also a good example (it used to be better pre Soviet invasion)

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#183

Post by aetherson »

twixfel wrote: post #82
aetherson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a deeply off-the-wall take. Why would the UKs living standards increase? Because the world continues to get richer. Is the UK going to regress to developing world status? That's a heck of a claim. Has any country that was among the richest in the world regressed to developing nation status? This is supposed to happen on the basis of being marginally disadvantaged in trade negotiations? Get real. This…

Argentina was 100 years ago one of the richest countries on the planet. I'm not saying that such a decline will will happen to the UK, but it is myopic to suggest that it is impossible. It's only "impossible" if we actively stop it happening.

I looked into this and I don't actually see any sign that Argentina suffered any long-term decline in established GPD per capita. It had a few sharp breaks and recessions that undid 10 or 20 years of progress. But all of the stuff about 100 years of decline in Argentina economy is based on counterfactuals about how they "should have" grown, not about absolute losses.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#184

Post by kaycey2022 »

tuukkah wrote: post #157
Georgelemental wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how did the UK acquire the strength needed to take those colonies? Would-be conquerors are a dime a dozen, empires as successful as the British not so much

What you refer to as strength is not potent anymore: you can surprise uncontacted peoples only once, and nowadays there's UN, the Geneva Convention etc. to stop such dehumanization that enabled the colonizations.

Most colonies back then had no big picture view of the world. They had no idea what tactics were being used against them and were hyper focused on their local situation. Internecine warfare within Europe and trading across the world gave the merchant companies training and advantages that no one else in the world had. Things are quite different now.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#185

Post by kaycey2022 »

walthamstow wrote: post #47
crop_rotation wrote: post #6

Does the UK have anything going for it? It is very hard for me to see the UK having a better quality of life in future than they had in the past. Not being part of the EU means they will mostly be squeezed in trade negotiations. And the UK does not have any industry going for it, so sooner or later the living standards would catch up with the rest of the developing world at the middle.

The past UK standard of living was based on pillaging the colonies, then after divestment of Empire it was briefly propped up in the 80s by North Sea oil and in the 00s by financial deregulation. No shit we're not going to have the same standard of living as the past.

It wasn’t just pillaging. I think the UK success was because they figured out arbitrage opportunities that no one else in the world could. That was because the rest of the world turned inwards.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#186

Post by ClumsyPilot »

nradov wrote: post #180
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not 'being out of the EU' by itself, its the fact: 1 - for the past 7 years, the government was doing nothing except infighting around brexit. Things like economic policy have been neglected. Straighforward non-political ssues, like the fact that wind farms wait for 10 years to be connected to the grid, are unaddressed. 2 - the current leadership is braindead. They have spent the past few months discus…

Why can't they just delete certain laws? At some historical point in time that law didn't exist, and most people somehow managed so survive. In a Common Law system, as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal.

> as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal.

Good, good, so now that you have deleted 50 years of law from UK, what are those things you've just legalised?

Certainly some types of Money laundering, probably a few types of financial fraud, carcinogens in food, and driving high-powered electric motorbikes without any kind of training or licence?

> Most people somehow managed so survive

Most people survived World War 2, and in Nagasaki most people survived getting nuked. In fact at least 50% of the population manages to survive almost anything.

On the other hand, in Victorian Britain 1/3 of kids never reached age 5, so there is that. Also many didn't survive child labour in the coal mines.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#187

Post by nradov »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #186
nradov wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they just delete certain laws? At some historical point in time that law didn't exist, and most people somehow managed so survive. In a Common Law system, as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal.

> as long as something isn't explicitly illegal then it's legal. Good, good, so now that you have deleted 50 years of law from UK, what are those things you've just legalised? Certainly some types of Money laundering, probably a few types of financial fraud, carcinogens in food, and driving high-powered electric motorbikes without any kind of training or licence? > Most people somehow managed so survive Most people s…

Come on, lose the hyperbole. The UK wasn't even an EU member for 50 years and removing some of those laws isn't going to increase child mortality.

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#188

Post by oska »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #182
sdsd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Britain isn’t a developing country, it’s a regressing one. There's so much research on developing countries, but I find deteriorating countries more interesting. There are many countries that used to be first world, and simply are not anymore. Argentina is the classic example, South Africa is the most heated example.

Afghanistan is also a good example (it used to be better pre Soviet invasion)

It also used to be better pre USA invasion (the more recent example)

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#189

Post by oska »

eterm wrote: post #37
tinktank wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the G8 I would presume.

It's not been the G8 for almost a decade now. If you really meant the G8, well, the UK for all it's faults is still somewhere I'd rather live than Russia.

And I would take Russia over the UK, even though my roots are British and I would enjoy delving into historical sites, etc, much more in the UK. But from looking on from Australia, the UK seems to be going downhill very rapidly, and has had a 'clown world' government for some time now. Russia, in contrast, only seems to be improving.

(I didn't feel this way 5 years ago. My views on the current state and future trajectories of both the UK and Russia have changed significantly over the past few years.)

Re: Britain Is a Developing Country

#190

Post by Shawnj2 »

oska wrote: post #188
Shawnj2 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan is also a good example (it used to be better pre Soviet invasion)

It also used to be better pre USA invasion (the more recent example)

Afghanistan between the Soviet invasion and the US invasion is basically “Taliban: The Country”. I’m not sure that’s an improvement
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