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Why Is Britain Broke?


Tim the Tank Nut

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

 

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

 

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

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I think in general there's somewhat of a malaise in Western society today, and the UK is just an example of that (although sh*t, I'd much rather be a poor person in 2019 London than 1819 London) and a general sense that we just don't have our act together as much as we did in the past. All of the WW2 discussions have kind of brought that home for me -- the US engaged in a logistical feat over 4 years that I don't think we'd be able to replicate nowadays, despite all our technological advantages. I don't think our forefathers were necessarily more intelligent/driven/patriotic than us, but there's like a systems failure or something.

 

We grew comfortable. It's killing the American Empire as sure as it did ours.

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I think in general there's somewhat of a malaise in Western society today, and the UK is just an example of that (although sh*t, I'd much rather be a poor person in 2019 London than 1819 London) and a general sense that we just don't have our act together as much as we did in the past. All of the WW2 discussions have kind of brought that home for me -- the US engaged in a logistical feat over 4 years that I don't think we'd be able to replicate nowadays, despite all our technological advantages. I don't think our forefathers were necessarily more intelligent/driven/patriotic than us, but there's like a systems failure or something.

We grew comfortable. It's killing the American Empire as sure as it did ours.

 

Quite perceptive, and totally correct.

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

 

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

 

 

Ah, the fine art of goalpost moving, combined with forgetting the devastation of the Napoleonic invasion, the devastation of the liberation by the English, and the lost of a big chunk of the empire because of revolutionaries supported and paid from London, while there was a theoretical alliance with Spain. Perhaps that was the last example of that "No peace beyond the line" principle.

 

In that context, 1898 is nothing more than an anecdote.

 

I think one could say that the raider/locusts role in Europe the Vikings did play during the early Middle Ages, passed to England, which keep at it from Elizabethan times to the end of the Napoleonic wars, then transferred that activity to Asia, first destroying the Indian textile industry, then making junkies of a good chunk of Chinese population.

 

Do you pretend to cover that with the industrial revolution? See how the first man in space did *not* justify Stalin crimes.

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Britain has not been the same since losing its Indian goose of gold. This is not an indictment, merely an observation, as it would be a surprise if post colonial Britain was as motivated economically with the comfort derived from the conservatively estimated $44 trillion extracted by Britain from India in the period 1765 to 1938 as it would be without it.

The question is when Britain will start actually trying to compete again instead of going through the comfort motions and living off of the interest. I am optimistic about how well Britain will do when it does, but less so that I have been in the past about whether it ever will.

Edited by Nobu
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I think one challenge that both the UK and the US have is how to distribute/diffuse their economies some more beyond the major cities -- not in a tax-the-rich sense, but more about bolstering the development of the rest of the country. The fact that there's so much money in SF and NYC isn't good for the country in general (and honestly it's not good for SF and NYC either), and my impression is that it's even worse with regards to London and the rest of the UK.

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I think one challenge that both the UK and the US have is how to distribute/diffuse their economies some more beyond the major cities -- not in a tax-the-rich sense, but more about bolstering the development of the rest of the country. The fact that there's so much money in SF and NYC isn't good for the country in general (and honestly it's not good for SF and NYC either), and my impression is that it's even worse with regards to London and the rest of the UK.

 

That was something the US had succeeded in doing until, I think, the 21st century. Washington DC was almost a backwater for business, while in France the country was divided between Paris and the countryside. England managed it very well, too, until the big growth of the London financial markets, and the decline of the manufacturing areas in the Midlands, etc.

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I think in general there's somewhat of a malaise in Western society today, and the UK is just an example of that (although sh*t, I'd much rather be a poor person in 2019 London than 1819 London) and a general sense that we just don't have our act together as much as we did in the past. All of the WW2 discussions have kind of brought that home for me -- the US engaged in a logistical feat over 4 years that I don't think we'd be able to replicate nowadays, despite all our technological advantages. I don't think our forefathers were necessarily more intelligent/driven/patriotic than us, but there's like a systems failure or something.

We grew comfortable. It's killing the American Empire as sure as it did ours.

 

 

There is no American Empire. The populations of all territories combined is less than the number of illegals in the Lower 48. The five inhabited territories are: Puerto Rico (PR), Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), American Samoa (AS), and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). We didn't conquer any of them by military force. The USVI we bought from the Danes (I have a big WTF on that strange transaction). The Marianas were liberated from the Japanese in '45. Only American Samoa was annexed in the traditional colonial sense, without a shot fired (except between the USN and the German Navy).

 

 

 

 

Puerto Rico is an odd duck, they are conditional US citizens more or less. We receive no federal income taxes from PR, only import/export taxes and SSI/Medicare. They are subject to a military draft, unlike say American Samoa.

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

 

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

Ah, the fine art of goalpost moving, combined with forgetting the devastation of the Napoleonic invasion, the devastation of the liberation by the English, and the lost of a big chunk of the empire because of revolutionaries supported and paid from London, while there was a theoretical alliance with Spain. Perhaps that was the last example of that "No peace beyond the line" principle.

 

In that context, 1898 is nothing more than an anecdote.

I think one could say that the raider/locusts role in Europe the Vikings did play during the early Middle Ages, passed to England, which keep at it from Elizabethan times to the end of the Napoleonic wars, then transferred that activity to Asia, first destroying the Indian textile industry, then making junkies of a good chunk of Chinese population.

Do you pretend to cover that with the industrial revolution? See how the first man in space did *not* justify Stalin crimes.

When I say innovate, I mean,

The steam engine.

The canal.

The railway.

The steam ship.

The iron ship.

John Harrison's marine chronometer.

The Bessemer converter.

The telegraph.

Mass production.

Modern archaeology.

Modern botany.

Paleontology.

 

 

 

Or innovators.

Charles Darwin.

IK Brunel

George Stephenson.

Thomas Telford.

Josiah Wedgewood.

Michael Faraday.

 

 

Did Spain display the same technical innovation in the same period? No.

 

I'm not talking about who had the best Empire. I'm talking about who were innovators and who wasnt. Spain's innovators lead the world, but by 1900 were a good century and a half past it.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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....... and armed US serviceman posing for photos with the Neva river behind them.

I think you mean Narva river - border river between towns of Narva (Estonia) and Ivangorod (Russia). Neva river is in StPeterburg

Sorry, autocorrect struck again. :)

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

Ah, the fine art of goalpost moving, combined with forgetting the devastation of the Napoleonic invasion, the devastation of the liberation by the English, and the lost of a big chunk of the empire because of revolutionaries supported and paid from London, while there was a theoretical alliance with Spain. Perhaps that was the last example of that "No peace beyond the line" principle.

 

In that context, 1898 is nothing more than an anecdote.

I think one could say that the raider/locusts role in Europe the Vikings did play during the early Middle Ages, passed to England, which keep at it from Elizabethan times to the end of the Napoleonic wars, then transferred that activity to Asia, first destroying the Indian textile industry, then making junkies of a good chunk of Chinese population.

Do you pretend to cover that with the industrial revolution? See how the first man in space did *not* justify Stalin crimes.

When I say innovate, I mean,

The steam engine.

The canal.

The railway.

The steam ship.

The iron ship.

John Harrison's marine chronometer.

The Bessemer converter.

The telegraph.

Mass production.

Modern archaeology.

Modern botany.

Paleontology.

 

 

 

Or innovators.

Charles Darwin.

IK Brunel

George Stephenson.

Thomas Telford.

Josiah Wedgewood.

Michael Faraday.

 

 

Did Spain display the same technical innovation in the same period? No.

 

I'm not talking about who had the best Empire. I'm talking about who were innovators and who wasnt. Spain's innovators lead the world, but by 1900 were a good century and a half past it.

 

 

Are you unable to keep a discussion on point?

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The question is when Britain will start actually trying to compete again instead of going through the comfort motions and living off of the interest. I am optimistic about how well Britain will do when it does, but less so that I have been in the past about whether it ever will.

 

The proverbial "nation of shopkeepers" will do very well indeed, when they let go of their craving for a piece of the EC pie and cradle-to-grave mothering, and use their technological prowess as deftly as they did in the Industrial Revolution.

 

While not academically rigorous, I believe there's a lot of truth to Jeremy Clarkson's old rant about British greatness.

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So, Stuart, how many British citizens do you think would put up with losing internet, telecoms and electricity to prevent Estonia from being reincorporated into Russia?

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

 

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

Ah, the fine art of goalpost moving, combined with forgetting the devastation of the Napoleonic invasion, the devastation of the liberation by the English, and the lost of a big chunk of the empire because of revolutionaries supported and paid from London, while there was a theoretical alliance with Spain. Perhaps that was the last example of that "No peace beyond the line" principle.

 

In that context, 1898 is nothing more than an anecdote.

I think one could say that the raider/locusts role in Europe the Vikings did play during the early Middle Ages, passed to England, which keep at it from Elizabethan times to the end of the Napoleonic wars, then transferred that activity to Asia, first destroying the Indian textile industry, then making junkies of a good chunk of Chinese population.

Do you pretend to cover that with the industrial revolution? See how the first man in space did *not* justify Stalin crimes.

When I say innovate, I mean,

The steam engine.

The canal.

The railway.

The steam ship.

The iron ship.

John Harrison's marine chronometer.

The Bessemer converter.

The telegraph.

Mass production.

Modern archaeology.

Modern botany.

Paleontology.

Or innovators.

Charles Darwin.

IK Brunel

George Stephenson.

Thomas Telford.

Josiah Wedgewood.

Michael Faraday.

Did Spain display the same technical innovation in the same period? No.

I'm not talking about who had the best Empire. I'm talking about who were innovators and who wasnt. Spain's innovators lead the world, but by 1900 were a good century and a half past it.

Are you unable to keep a discussion on point?

That WAS my point. I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make.

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I think one challenge that both the UK and the US have is how to distribute/diffuse their economies some more beyond the major cities -- not in a tax-the-rich sense, but more about bolstering the development of the rest of the country. The fact that there's so much money in SF and NYC isn't good for the country in general (and honestly it's not good for SF and NYC either), and my impression is that it's even worse with regards to London and the rest of the UK.

 

That was something the US had succeeded in doing until, I think, the 21st century. Washington DC was almost a backwater for business, while in France the country was divided between Paris and the countryside. England managed it very well, too, until the big growth of the London financial markets, and the decline of the manufacturing areas in the Midlands, etc.

 

 

I think this is actually happening to a certain extent in the US. In the SF Bay, the big tech companies are starting to realize that no matter what they can offer salary-wise, it's just not enough for an employee to be able to buy a house and raise a family in this area. Starting salary for a Facebook programmer is about 160k last time I checked, which would make you upper-class in most of the country but it's impossible to buy a house and raise a couple kids in the Bay on that income. So they're opening up big tech hubs in Austin, Denver, etc. (and those jobs are just insanely competitive -- they're dying for employees willing to work in Mountain View or whatever though).

Edited by Brian Kennedy
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No, Stuart, no. The point is that Spain's was a civilizing empire, so there was nothing of "conquer, living off the sweat of the colonials, then sleep". Spain did extend Christianism through most of a whole new continent, and established universities to improve education of the overseas Spanish, that definitively were not colonials. A Peruvian local miner was paid more than a contemporary German one, but today's India still keeps a deeply Racist caste system. Not much civilizing done there. And the less is said about Africa, the best.

 

England, as the Netherlands, or Portugal, were only interested in predating from their empires. Dutch atrocities in the Spices Islands could have very well inspired Leopold rule in the Congo. It is very ironic they accuse the originators of civilizing empires, Imperial Russia or Spain of doing just what the predators were doing. Very ironic.

Edited by sunday
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How do you know they aren't going to do that anyway? Stop pretending appeasement is a viable option.

As far as i remember you live in countryside - so you ignore the fact to what extent Britan is now multi- ethnic and even multi-racial state. Imagine explaining British citizen of Pakistani origin why his hard-earned tax pounds to be spend on hypothetic protection of one barbarians on swampy shores of cold sea somewhere in the middle of nowhere from another barbarians from arctic deserts. He would ask you why are you not rushing to protect his native Pakistan (where his extended family still live) from evil India where actual conflict is erupting from time to time? Or explaining to ethnic Indian voter why are you not protecting India from China? Or to Hong Kong Chinese why are you not focusing on protecting his native land from mainland? And so on.

Here in Russia, one of the fundamental problems is Russia is not "state of Russians" but multhi-ethnic state. Practical effect of that is, for example, ideological problem with supporting Donbass on state level - it will cause, for example, ethnic Armenian Russian citizens start asking reasonable question why Russia is not supporting Artsakh against Azeris, or ethnic Azeri start asking if they are second best citizens of Russia since Russia is sort of supporting Armenia, and so on. As result, Russia is failing to start any significant program like those run by Poles and Hungarians granting citizenship to ethnic Russians - jumping wording loops instead with naming them "Russian-speaking" or other names, and facing strong criticism from "Russian imperialists" and nationalists.

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....... and armed US serviceman posing for photos with the Neva river behind them.

I think you mean Narva river - border river between towns of Narva (Estonia) and Ivangorod (Russia). Neva river is in StPeterburg

Or did he?

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I think multi-ethnicity is a natural (and desirable) state of great countries, the challenge is in incorporating the immigrants into a patriotic view of stuff.

Well, try explaining to British citizen from Pakistan why defending Estonia is more patriotic than defending Pakistan.

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How do you know they aren't going to do that anyway? Stop pretending appeasement is a viable option.

 

Stop being so out of touch with reality Stuart. No one in his right mind would sanction our government getting into a battle we could never win over Estonia with untold consequences to the UK. I strongly suspect that only about one in ten adults in the UK could point to Estonia on a map. A higher percentage probably think it's the school Boris went to. :P

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I think multi-ethnicity is a natural (and desirable) state of great countries, the challenge is in incorporating the immigrants into a patriotic view of stuff.

Well, try explaining to British citizen from Pakistan why defending Estonia is more patriotic than defending Pakistan.

Because the British citizen from Pakistan is British, and left Pakistan on purpose?I mean, we have a giant Asian population here that has very little if any input on our foreign policy.

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Because the British citizen from Pakistan is British, and left Pakistan on purpose?I mean, we have a giant Asian population here that has very little if any input on our foreign policy.

 

In what way British=Estonian? His purpose was to get better life for him and his family (including extended family back in Pakistan), not fighting in half-frozen swamps.

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Losing India combined with the hobbling effect of the dependency created by the economic exploitation of it from 1765 to the 1930s certainly should be considered a factor. That this would not prepare a nation and its people well for economic takeoff in the post colonial era is not surprising in various ways.

... Spain did, kick up its heals and live off its Empire.

Well, if you do not know well the history of your own country, you are not expected to know the history of other countries. :P

 

Hint: How many universities were founded in Spain's overseas territories, and how many were founded in the English colonies?

Reading.

fine, but go much technical innovation was Spain doing after the 17th century? I mean no offense when I suggest it never industrialized like Britain or France. If it had, it probably would have won in 1898.

Ah, the fine art of goalpost moving, combined with forgetting the devastation of the Napoleonic invasion, the devastation of the liberation by the English, and the lost of a big chunk of the empire because of revolutionaries supported and paid from London, while there was a theoretical alliance with Spain. Perhaps that was the last example of that "No peace beyond the line" principle.

 

In that context, 1898 is nothing more than an anecdote.

I think one could say that the raider/locusts role in Europe the Vikings did play during the early Middle Ages, passed to England, which keep at it from Elizabethan times to the end of the Napoleonic wars, then transferred that activity to Asia, first destroying the Indian textile industry, then making junkies of a good chunk of Chinese population.

Do you pretend to cover that with the industrial revolution? See how the first man in space did *not* justify Stalin crimes.

When I say innovate, I mean,

The steam engine.

The canal.

The railway.

The steam ship.

The iron ship.

John Harrison's marine chronometer.

The Bessemer converter.

The telegraph.

Mass production.

Modern archaeology.

Modern botany.

Paleontology.

 

 

 

Or innovators.

Charles Darwin.

IK Brunel

George Stephenson.

Thomas Telford.

Josiah Wedgewood.

Michael Faraday.

 

 

Did Spain display the same technical innovation in the same period? No.

 

I'm not talking about who had the best Empire. I'm talking about who were innovators and who wasnt. Spain's innovators lead the world, but by 1900 were a good century and a half past it.

Funny you should mention the steam engine. The other day I came upon the name of a Spaniard who had built a steam engine to drain water from mines in the early 1600s, long before the British steam pioneers. Of course, with typical Spanish reverse-chauvinism, the man does not even get a blue plaque in his place of birth and no one remembers his name.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jer%C3%B3nimo_de_Ayanz_y_Beaumont (The Spanish version is more detailed)

Edited by Mikel2
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