Xiaofan Chen wrote:

> The point I want to make is that the situation is really not that bad in
> US/EU. The outsourcing may affect some people but the great picture is
> not that bad.

It is not bad. Not at all, IMO. But people there have become used to a lot
of "perks".

It's more like looking at the world and starting to think "wow, I might
actually have to work hard some day; isn't there something that can be
done?" Then they borrow some more money, buy some new toys and continue
business as usual.

It's not that there is no work. There's plenty of work. The thing is that
there is less and less work where you can live comfortably, buy all these
thousands of gadgets, don't have to give too much of yourself and still
have a lot of time off. 

These complaints really sound odd if you're in or in close contact with
some poorer areas of the planet. 

Look at e.g. Czech Republic. I haven't been there lately, but from what I
hear, in this time of general complaints about the economy, they have made
quite some advances. And they're a neighbor of Germany, so from a
geopolitical viewpoint they are similarly located as the traditional
European rich countries. But one crucial difference is that they are not
(yet) "lazy", don't (yet) look at things from a "not losing perks" POV but
from a "bring it on" POV.

And while we're at it (comparing countries), I think the biggest issue is
that we have to get to a new understanding of what ideas like "nation",
"borders" or "sovereignty" mean. These ideas need a serious overhaul to
continue to be useful. The times where armed forces were enough or even
useful to guarantee sovereignty are gone; the traditional concept of
sovereignty is gone. We are in a situation similar to the one the Brazilian
land owners were 200 years ago, and I hope we don't make the same mistake
they made. They didn't realize that giving up some of their wealth
("investing it") to help the whole country develop would have brought them
more (much more) return than keeping it to themselves, trying to become
even more rich, by keeping the poor even more poor. In the long run, a not
quite so rich in a rich country lives better than a very rich in a poor
country -- this is what they failed to see. Now they live in ghettos, and
can't really enjoy their heaps of money the way I could what little I had
in Germany. You can easily transfer this to the worldwide situation now.
Thinking in terms of "we vs them" isn't going to work for much longer.

Gerhard

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist