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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HPilot who wrote (425992)	10/14/2008 1:42:51 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1574692

"Once again you have it backwards. Those countries did not do that, they gave it to the poor and the Dictator or Queen." Say what? Let us takes the Brits, for example. The British Empire was the largest Empire in the world. It didn't get that way because of a history of low taxes, quite the contrary. They milked the Dominions for all they were worth. And did a similar job back home. Due to the technological changes in the 1800s, they engaged in an arms race with the rest of the world to maintain naval superiority. Advancements in hull material, wood to ironclads to all iron and steel, propulsion, sail to steam engines to steam turbines and weaponry, black powder to gun cotton, smooth bore to rifling and larger bores and longer guns. Before the current generation was finished, newer and more powerful ships were on the drawing boards. A ship of the line a decade or more old was almost helpless in the face of the ships coming out of the yards. Finally, everything culminated in the dreadnought class battleships that were being built right before WWI through the beginning of WWII. WWI was a disaster for the Brits. It was extremely expensive for them. The dreadnoughts, which were supposed to give them military superiority, were pretty useless in both world wars. They were rarely used except for bombardment. The governments did their best to keep them from fighting each other because they were so expensive. The Dominions supplied men, material and money. Sadly, the British commanders weren't exactly top-notch, so more than one Gallipoli occurred. When the war ended, the Dominions started to split off. They felt they were exploited, it cost them heavily and the benefit was minor. The British Empire started to shrivel as their cash cows headed for greener fields. To add insult to injury, the between the war years proved that the Empire had bet on the wrong technology. As Billy Mitchell demonstrated, battleships were just targets for bombers. So the tremendous investment that was made in dreadnought class battleships was wasted. They were big, expensive, and not very useful. WWII drove the final nail into that coffin. The Soviet Union followed a similar path, albeit not as the leader. They engaged in an arms race, pouring a huge fraction of their economy into the effort. And it proved to be the wrong weapon systems. Whether or not it was SDI that drove the final nail as the Reagan worshipers push, or man portable intelligent weapons in Afghanistan that did it, or possibly both, it became abundantly clear that they had bet on the wrong horse and were looking a having to re-equip. Which they couldn't afford to do.