Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 23:15:38 +0000 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool, A White Snowy Christmas in Sunnyvale, California 8) Message-ID: <367ED69A.C58FE14F@uk.radan.com> References: <83356.914256216@zippy.cdrom.com>
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"Jordan K. Hubbard" wrote: > > > I think we get ripped off for just about everything in Europe (when > > Speaking as a former occupant of Europe, I can only agree. :) > Let's not even get into the differences in tax rates... Sometimes I'm > amazed that there are _any_ rich people in Europe, or if not amazed > then certainly understanding why there's so much money in Switzerland. > With taxes as high as 75% in some of the Nordic countries, I'd > hide my money too! :) > Used to be as high as 83% in the UK. When they reduced the top rate to 60% the amount of money raised from those "eligible" for top rate tax actually went *up*, because it wasn't worth hiding it (cheaper than getting done for tax evasion). > > clothes etc, what cost a Pound in England cost a Dollar in the US (the > > exchange rate was ~$2.40/UKP, thats 60% cheaper!). I'll bet things are > > still the same, although we're down to ~$1.60/UKP. No wonder Americans > > Seen just yesterday: Round-trip from San Francisco to London, $277 USD. > Gack! At that price, it's almost worth going for just a couple of days. > > > Mind you, I can't see why telcoms need to be so expensive in Europe. > > After all, the distances within any European country are considerably > > less than in the States so the cost of providing the infrastructure > > should be considerably less too. No doubt greedy Governments are > > partly to blame with high taxes, VAT (sales tax) is 17.5% in the UK. > > That and a total lack of competition. With any market based economy, > things are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them, there > being no such thing as "intrinsic value" anymore, really. Therefore > when there are two or more providers of a reasource, they play off one > another and people's willingness to pay without negotiation first goes > down, driving the prices down in turn. It's not like the businessmen > in the U.S. are more altruistic or anything, there are simply a lot > more of them competing for those scarce customer dollars! :) > Yes, the competition was supposed to come from the Cable operators, but as I said before, that just doesn't seem to be working, so BT continue with a virtual monopoly. > What really burns me up is that Europe, with its far more advantageous > population density, hasn't leveraged this advantage properly. When > your entire country is the size of one small eastern U.S. state, > you're able to do a lot of really nifty things that you just can't do > when your population is over 250 million people. > > You can have smaller, more effective schools and closer ties with > industry for training students in real-life situations (what the > Germans call a student's "prakticum", I believe) and you can wire up > the local population for a much cheaper cost per head in terms of > doing things like wireless roaming networks (what Metrocom calls > "Ricochet" service here the U.S.). > Precisely. The UK has about 1/5th the population of the US, but 1/37th the land area so it should be cost-effective to provide us with a telephony infra-structure superior to that in the US. > In other words, the Europeans have always had the option of creating a > far more skilled and well educated information society than they have > and it's frankly kind of criminal that they appear to be blowing the > opportunity. Even the much-vaunted European school system standards > have decayed significantly from their former heights, and I know I'm > generalizing wildly here now but I'm thinking mostly of the > UK/Germany/France here - perhaps the nordic countries have done better > over the last 2 decades, I just don't know. > > What I do know is that many European countries have been famous for > centuries for having some of the best educated populations and for > fostering some of the greatest periods of intellectual advancement > (like the Rennaisance) in human history. Now that we've reached the > information age, it looks like just about everyone except for perhaps > Finland has completely dropped the ball. What's going on over there, > guys? You should have wireless, unmetered usage, IP networks covering > every major city and federal programs where every able-bodied citizen > over 10 years old gets a state sponsored laptop and a wireless modem. > Villages of 40 people or more should qualify for free E1 service or > even more if some percentage of the population is actively engaged in > software development. It is this long, long history which contributes to the conservatism (lower case 'c', nothing to do with the Conservative Party) we have over here, that resistance to change, which slows down advancement. Now we've got to the information age this is a massive handicap as the pace of change is so rapid that we fall a long way behind in next to no time. There is an almost total lack of willingness for investors to put money into new ventures that are the first in there field, as there is no _proof_ that it is going to be successful. Investors only seem to be interested in dead certs. This contrasts to, as I see it, the US approach that if you plough enough money in then _anything_ can be a success. There was a TV programme here a while ago presented jointly by Robert X Cringley (author of Triumph of the Nerds) which looked at the world of IT in the US & UK. They showed a couple of students in a room at a US university who had created a new Web search engine (Google or Googley IIRC) who approached investors. One guy turned up, watched their demo, and wrote them a cheque for $100,000 there and then. This contrasted with a guy here who had set up an online bookstore, that was actually up and running, but he just couldn't get a penny of investment because it was new and innovative. It was eventually bought out by amazon.com (and is now amzon.uk.com), a company who I believe has never made a single dollar profit but is quoted as being worth millions on the US stock market. That would never happen here. > Get Off Your Butts, you EC slackers! :-) > Well said. > - Jordan > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message -- Trust the computer industry to shorten Year 2000 to Y2K. It was this thinking that caused the problem in the first place. Mark Ovens, CNC Applications Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd Sheet Metal CAD/CAM Solutions mailto:marko@uk.radan.com http://www.radan.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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