51–60 of 127 posts
Celebrating success as the author puts it is merely a symptom of meritocracy and individual responsibility. Of course, it comes with its own issues (less of a social safety net and income disparity).
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" richest and most powerful country in the history of the world..." not even close http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-modern_great_powers
Does any of those countries come close to the GDP of, say, Alabama ($160bn)? Sure, comparing the value of organic wine form Rome to a car from Detroit is not straight-forward but technological progress and compound interest generally ensure that powers of today absolutely dwarf those of even a hundred years ago, not to mention a thousand years ago, or two. The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at…
No-one cares primarily because it's not a consumer product. If Pinterest was Spanish and sold for $9.5B, you'd know about it. See also: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/03/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
It's consumerism, it's users using things that people care about.
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Per-capita is way more important, a rich man doesn't need more than one toothbrush and it's detrimental for a country when other men can't afford a single one.
The question is "which country is the richest and most powerful". If we use the per capita statistics, Luxembourg is. That doesn't sound quite right, does it? If we look at the totals instead, the top ranks are USA, China, Japan and Germany. If you ask me, that seems more like what we're looking for.
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Per-capita is way more important, a rich man doesn't need more than one toothbrush and it's detrimental for a country when other men can't afford a single one.
Insofar as domestic policy is concerned, per-capita is relevant. Foreign policy, which is decided by governments that tax the aggregate population (and thus draw from the GDP)? Not in the slightest.
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Insofar as domestic policy is concerned, per-capita is relevant. Foreign policy, which is decided by governments that tax the aggregate population (and thus draw from the GDP)? Not in the slightest.
We are talking about foreign policy? I just found out, I would have swear we were talking about economical influence on international tech news coverage.
Foreign policy, affected by GDP, certainly plays a role in this.
Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…
A quick google search through negocios.pt (probably the biggest Portuguese business newspaper):
* Whatsapp: 41 results
* Ono: 4 results
Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does any of those countries come close to the GDP of, say, Alabama ($160bn)? Sure, comparing the value of organic wine form Rome to a car from Detroit is not straight-forward but technological progress and compound interest generally ensure that powers of today absolutely dwarf those of even a hundred years ago, not to mention a thousand years ago, or two. The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at…
The gross world product is about 72 trillion dollars. Alabama's share of that is 0.2%. In order to 'come close to Alabama', a historical power would have to be close to 0.2% of the world's GDP at the time. And I don't think any of the ones in that list went that low.
That's like saying that the last person on Forbes 500 is not really rich because they barely have 0.05% ($3 billion / $6 trillion) of the group's net worth.
We get millions of headlines for Apple launching video chat in the US market while they had that in EU 5 and in JP 7 years back.
At the risk of sounding overly condecending, if there is something that "ze Americans" do great is selling their supremacy (ie. we are the best).
BTW: Thats a good thing as they tend to fake it till they make it.
Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…
Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning but it's hardly the top motivator for business owners I've spoken…