> No, the fundamental problem with state is exactly that: it exists to propagate and protect itself, but you, the citizen, are not included. You are a resource, and your well-being and happiness is only incidental, not the actual goal.
Beliefs like that are self-fulfilling prophecies. People who believe in that often give up trying to influence the state and exclude themselves from its interests. If too many people do that, the state will not care about them.
There is a trade-off based on the size of the state. Small states are easier to influence and more likely care about their citizens. Politicians stay more in touch with other citizens, and the average citizen is more likely to know some politicians in their everyday life. But small states often make amateurish mistakes, because they are governed by amateurs without access to sufficient expertise on various topics.
Large states have an easier time finding the expertise they need. But they tend to develop a political class out of touch with ordinary citizens. Political leaders become powerful and important people who mostly associate with other elites.
I believe the ideal size of a state is in single-digit millions, or maybe up to 10 or 20 million. Like most European countries and US states.
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships such as cruise ships.
By becoming wealthy later than European countries.
Shipyards are long-term investments. It makes sense to build them when you have the expertise and labor costs are in your favor. But once you have built them, they are a sunk cost. You can remain competitive against countries with cheaper labor for decades.
Globalization and the growth of international trade also helped. China built new shipyards, but the demand for new ships also grew, keeping Korean and Japanese shipyards in business. Meanwhile, the wage gap is gradually getting narrower.
Not an expert but I think it has a lot to do with what gets prioritized by the government and other groups. Tax breaks and other support aren't infinite and where they (any given government) chooses to use them makes a big impact.
That's a naive argument. Infrastructure construction timelines are typically measured in years and decades. You need to find the political will to do it and sufficient guarantees of long-term demand to justify the investment. And the work itself is often done in difficult environments, such as under major streets or on privately owned land that may already be in use.
In parts that do not care much about property rights and citizens are not allowed to challenge government decisions in the courts.
If I was trying to build new infrastructure in Finland, I would add four years to the project between the planning and the construction stages. Two years for urban planning and public hearings, and another two years for the inevitable lawsuits. Other Western countries should have similar delays.
Coordination problems become easier when there is a pressing need to solve them.
If pennies are phased out, companies need to figure out how to do business without pennies. If they can't find a legal way to continue business, they will tell the relevant legislators that the laws should be changed. If the legislators don't see a reason to change the laws, the companies will probably stop doing business in that jurisdiction. If the legislators still don't see a reason to change the laws, then the outcome is probably what the local residents wanted.
Experts generally expected that there would be effective COVID vaccines by the end of 2020, because vaccine development is not magic. There are several known approaches to creating vaccines, and it was reasonable to expect that some of them would work.
What set COVID vaccines apart was government commitment. Governments around the world bought large quantities of vaccines before it was known whether that particular vaccine would be effective. (Regulatory approval was also expedited, but that it business as usual during serious disease outbreaks.)
The equivalent with fighter jets would be the government committing to buy 200 fighter jets, with an option for many more, from everyone who made a good enough proposal. And paying for the first 200 in advance, even if it later turns out that the proposal was fundamentally flawed and the jets will not be delivered.
How could Shenzhen possibly compete with the rest of the world in electronics?
Specialization is the answer. The bigger you are, the more fields you can be competitive in. But even regions much smaller than the UK can be world leaders in something, if they choose to prioritize that and play their cards right.
There is nothing preventing the UK from taking advantage of the talent pool, supply chain, and consumer market of an equally large economy in their chosen field. Except maybe the UK itself.
National borders are as important as you choose to make them. Small countries have always relied on diplomacy and trade to be successful. The UK just needs to accept that it's one small country among many, and start acting accordingly.
You are using "free market" as a political term. In that sense, it refers to little more than to the absence of unnecessary regulations.
Economics is more concerned about whether "free market" is a useful description of the system. If there is nothing in principle to prevent the emergence of new competition, but barriers to entry (e.g. availability of capital / talent / machinery / raw materials, long-term contracts, or the time required to set up a new business) make it difficult in practice, the system may not behave like a market. Then you need to focus more on politics, both between and within governments and companies, to understand how the system is actually working.
Some European languages have a word for "science". Some have a word for "Wissenschaft". I'm not aware of any language that has separate words for both concepts. Confusion ensues when "science" inevitably gets translated to "Wissenschaft", or the other way around.
Science is centered around the scientific method. A naive understanding of it can lead to an excessive focus on producing disconnected factoids called results. Wissenschaft has different failure modes, but because you are supposed to study your chosen topic systematically by any means necessary, you have to think more about what you are trying to achieve and how. For example, whether you want to produce results, explanations, case studies, models, predictions, or systems.
The literature tends to be better when people see results as intermediate steps they can build on, rather than as primary goals.
Huh, I never really thought deeply about this. My mother tongue is Dutch which has the word “Wetenschap” which maps directly to Wissenschaft.
But I don’t consciously distinguish that from the English “science”. Although obviously the connotation of science leans on the scientific method whilst “Wetenschap” is more on the “gaining of knowledge”.
While there is no single English-word translation I can think of, I guess “knowledge building” or “the effort to expand knowledge” might be good approximations.
Interesting, never thought about this distinction too much.
> Some European languages have a word for "science". Some have a word for "Wissenschaft". I'm not aware of any language that has separate words for both concepts
not really european but in russian it's neither. the word for science "наука" literally is closest to "teaching" or "education" (edit: and historically "punishment")
there is no stem for knowledge ("знать") OR science (doesn't even exist in russian) in that word:)
Theology is a "science" in the same way as social science is a science. They don't use the scientific approach as defined by Popper, but they still try to find out stuff in the best possible way.
Specifically theology searches for knowledge by appealing to scripture and tradition as sources of fact, in the same way that modern science appeals to empirical observation. A theologian of Aquinas's time would have been confident that both methods of study would lead to the same conclusions.
It's certainly the case that the term "science" now refers strictly to empirical science.
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