The world's fifth biggest economy

China is a civilisation more than a country. Arguably you should be comparing it to Europe rather than to a specific European state. Europeans have been fighting each other since the dawn of human settlement there (in fact, before it, if you count Neanderthals as Europeans), and it didn't hurt their progress through the Modern period. If anything it helped it. I don't think civil wars have any bearing on innovation.

You have backtracked hugely since your original statement: now that you have removed the parts I disagreed with, I agree with all of the above, except the fact that you 'did not say that Nazism was an educated movement' - you did say exactly that.

That is a more credible way of thinking about it compared to what you said before (perhaps I was taking you too literally - not having a consideration for the long-term consequences of your greed is still not the same as deliberately planning to make it uninhabitable).

I must ask you to quote exactly where I stated that Nazism was an educated movement.

Can you give any evidence to support the fact that civil war damages innovation? The Roman Republic and part of the Imperial period was plagued by civil wars but seemed to do quite a lot of inovating. So was the medieval Islamic Caliphate, and the USA in the 19th Century, and France during the revolutionary period, and indeed most of the major centres of innovative thought throughout history, Britain being one of the few exceptions as one of the more peaceful countries in Europe over the past 300 years.

I will do so, for the second time. You said:

"[Nazi Germany] did not engage in cultural suicide such as the 'Cultural Revolution', in which intellect is frowned upon and the uneducated class becomes the ruler of a nation."

Actually I must make an apology here, since on further investigation, despite their deeply anti-intellectual philosophy, many leading Nazis were actually very well educated. Not Hitler himself or any of his military lieutenants such as Hoess and Bormann, but Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels were both very intelligent and well educated as were some other members of his civilian cabinet.

It's all lies. Obviously OP gets his salary from the EU!

On a serious note, I've never understood why "we're the 5th biggest economy in the world" is a reason for leaving the #1 biggest economy in the world.

It makes no logical sense. It's like saying California should leave the US because on its own, it's the 7th biggest economy in the world. Maybe it is, but surely its better to be part of the biggest?

It makes no logical sense. It's like saying California should leave the US because on its own, it's the 7th biggest economy in the world. Maybe it is, but surely its better to be part of the biggest?

For all those making the point about the 500m in the EU, what about the 2.6b in the commonwealth, of which we're the lead?
What about the fact that even if we lost the market of 500m consumers in the EU, by making a single trade agreement with India - who again, just happen to be a commonwealth country - we'd have 1.6b consumers?

Why are these points irrelevant?

@typonaut


I do not for one moment believe that UK is the fifth largest economy.

Last I checked we do not have, nor have any intentions, of having free travel arrangements with much of it

Power.

California has never known anything but having a small role in a larger state. Britain ruled the world.

Nostalgia about a lost role in world affairs (a role which incidentally was often extremely exploitative and oppressive) should not be a basis for deciding about current actions or future political affiliations.

A role that implemented freedom, democracy, and common law to these places, there's a clear divide between the for!er British colonies and the former Iberian colonies, funnily enough the British ones are better (unless you want to be a despot).

Again you need to look at the context I used originally. I was describing China's tendency to regress their cultural progress by choosing to purge knowledge and fight against its own people. This was in reply to you when you stated that we should 'give them time'. History has shown that China does not have a good reputation of social cohesion, and they don't make good decisions in terms of advancing as a nation.

You are suggesting the technological advancements during civil wars, but have you considered the advancements during civil peace times? Can you say with confidence that civil wars will result in more inventions than peace time? No 'evidence' can prove that civil wars damages innovation or otherwise encourage it, because there is no alternate scenario we can sample on, unless we also live in a parallel world.

I was describing the Cultural Revolution since these were its key characteristic, that was not a contrast to Germany. Even if you take it by that context I still did not suggest that the Nazis were educated, if anything it would suggest that they weren't uneducated which isn't saying much. The context would become, 'Simon is not stupid' for example, which doesn't exactly mean Simon is clever.

Look at another "fact", the EU's population is 508 million, in the table referenced above that would place it third overall (even without the UK it would be 440 million, still well above the USA). Doesn't "biggest combined economy in the world" (the EU) for the next 10 years or so sound pretty good? Or "third largest combined economy" (the EU) if rankings are tied to population? Sounds a lot better to me than "22nd largest economy".

It makes no logical sense. It's like saying California should leave the US because on its own, it's the 7th biggest economy in the world. Maybe it is, but surely its better to be part of the biggest?

Small countries do not have to be in a union . New Zealand has the same GDP per capita as the UK and unemployment rate.

What they have to be is associated very closely with bigger counties (Australia) or in a Union.

Anybody who uses the phrase 'history has shown' clearly does not understand history very well. Until the early modern period, history 'showed' that Britain was a backward and irrelevant island at the edge of Europe. It showed that the Americas were a separate zone of humanity with no connection to affairs in the Old World. If it shows us anything, it shows us that after a major revolution in human technological and scientific progress, the entire political dynamic of the globe completely changes. We are currently in the process of going through such a change - arguably the most significant change in humanity since the invention of agriculture, namely the digital and scientific revolutions. What happens from now on may have little to no bearing on what was happening for the past 2000 years.

And anyhow, I say again, China does not have a history of 'purging knowledge' or 'fighting against its own people' any more than Europe did before the industrial revolution.

I never claimed that, I just said it is clearly not a hard and fast rule that civil wars clearly stall technological progress.

You were comparing two different entities:

'Simon, unlike Fred, is not a moron.'

In other words, Fred is a moron.

So you're saying that all the international bodies are incompetent when it comes to simply collecting numbers and therefore the UK does not have the 5th highest GDP in the world? Got anything to back up this statement?

Posted from TSR Mobile