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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2381)11/23/2005 4:47:30 PM
From: arun gera  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 218633
 
>The old colonial methods are at work = I hire Americans with brains who invent good things and they hire Indians or Chinese [whoever will work for less money] to do the work extending and developing.>

Now Indians and Chinese companies are starting to invent new things and hiring Americans and others, when they need them. Just a natural progression.

>China tries to short-circuit the process by stealing intellectual property, but theft is not a good long-run process, as one becomes persona non grata, sidelined and caged.>

China or Chinese are no more of stealers than anyone else. Americans download music and movies illegally. Look at it another way. Americans could be categorized as bigger cheats as they are cheating for a $10 CD that is 0.2 percent of their monthly income. There is no hardship. Chinese are doing it for 2-5 percent of their monthly income and a much higher proportion of their disposable income.

>Theft was fine in the found-wealth era when Genghis could rampage across the landscape, living off the land. Nowadays, it would be very difficult for a modern Genghis to take over.>

I don't think the theft motivation has changed all that much. Isn't US rampaging through Iraq?

In any case, theft is now done in more insidious ways - like changing government policies, changing public opinion, running puppet governments, inflating stock options, and overliquifying the financial markets.

The "powerful" have gotten smarter - they don't even have to be in the battlefield like Genghis Khan was. No need to rough it out or risk serious injury or death. Just keep some good lawyers and lobbyists around, and you are relatively safe if a risky endeavor fails.

Reminds me of an Urdu couplet or "sher" ("Urdu has some nice "shers". the most famous poet was Mirza Ghalib. More here. ghalib.org - "Girte hain shehanshah Maidan e Jang mein. Woh kya girega jo ghutno ke bal chale." or "The chevalier falls to his death in the battlefield. How will he fall who crawls away?)

The characteristics of noblehood have changed with times. Maybe not. This verse was probably used to get ordinary men to sacrifice their lives.

-Arun



To: Maurice Winn who wrote (2381)11/24/2005 1:28:09 AM
From: elmatador  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 218633
 
"versatility of the language and its effectiveness is a direct representation of the value of the users" That was exactly what I was alluding to.

A stupid language like Bahasa Indonesia, Igbo, Urdu used in a stupid environment, will produce stupid people.

The Indonesians, Pakistanis and Ibos are as brilliant as their genetic material allow them to be,

But they get the mother tongue and inherit form the environment and make them less competitive. This is bad!

In Thailand, the politicians tried to force feed Thai language as means of nationalism. The Globalization struck. They had to quickly change the tune and enforce teaching English to kids.

Similar to Malaysia -which speaks Bahasa Melayu-. Mahatir wanted to enforce Bahasa Melayu. But at the same time he wanted to develop the country.

He discovered to get a high - tech economy he needed people able to speak, read and write English. He changed the tune.

It is this way that we are going to get more clever and cleverer people. Not because English is a better language: (It was stupid until the French invaded them at the beginning of the second millennium and improved their stupid language. Which from them on sucked Latin and Greek in to it and became a decent tool)

It is the availability of stuff written and published in English that makes English a clever language. My mother tongue is Portuguese. When I read something technical in Portuguese I laugh. The conciseness of English for technical stuff is wonderful.

Czech, Swedish, Vietnamese, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa, Melayu, Dutch, Finish, Hungarian...

100 years and they will go to the scrap heap,

only guaranteed to survive in 500 years: English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and India language.