Monday, September 17, 2007
Our goal, of course, is to be #1, over all factors, of course
The factors of production:
In economics, factors of production are resources used in the production of goods and services...
* Land or natural resource – naturally-occurring goods such as soil and minerals that are used in the creation of products. The land or resource need not be on Earth (nor any other planet) as in the future land will include moons (beginning with mining Helium-3 from Luna, for example) and asteroids, and other obtainment of materials in space. The payment for the use of land owned by another is Economic rent.
* Labour – human effort used in production which also includes technical and marketing expertise. The payment for labour (workforce) is a wage or a salary. Wage can be either in nominal value or in real value. Usually the salary or wage are marked as "w".
* Capital – either the prior-produced production goods (business capital, or real capital) that are physically used by businesses to produce other goods, or the funding (financial capital) that is provided by investors to businesses so as to pay the previous producers for those production goods. The return on business capital is profits, part of which may be retained and the rest paid in dividends. The return to financial capital depends on the legal and economic form it takes, where the return on equity capital is the dividends received and the return on debt capital is interest. Capital gains upon investments in equity (from stock value increases) or debt (from bond value increases) are not factor incomes as they are not payments for any additional provision of capital but come from a change in others' opinions about the value of the existing capital and its arrangement.
List of countries by total area
- Russia 17,000,000 square kilometers
- Canada 10,000,000 square kilometers
- People's Republic of China 9,600,000 square kilometers
- United States of America 9,600,000 square kilometers
- Brazil 8,500,000 square kilometers
List of countries by population
- People's Republic of China: 1,300,000,000 people
- India 1,200,000,000 people
- European Union 490,000,000 people
- United States of America 300,000,000 people
- Indonesia: 230,000,000 people
List of countries by GDP (nominal)
- European Union 15,000,000 million dollars
- United States of America 13,000,000 million dollars
- Japan 4,400,000 million dollars
- Germany 2,900,000 million dollars
- People's Republic of China 2,600,000
When different policies are proposed, one question that should be asked is "Does this help shrink the gap?" Another is, "Does this help America's power?"
Allowing the Mexican states to join the US would put us into #2 for land area... somehow though I doubt the Canadians would go for such a thing... instead they’d be ones to advocate the socalled North American Union.
Re: #2... how soon until the first son or daughter of tdaxp shall be wrought?
Bull honkey the EU is a country. Granted though... them having a higher GDP than us doesn’t look to good and something that should be rectified.
Posted by: Brendan | Monday, September 17, 2007
Expanding the United States of America to cover the Mexican United States -- leaving state boundaries in tact, but swapping out one Constitution for another south fo the border -- makes the most sense.
If Canada falls apart, the western Provinces would make sense as new states.
Any "North American Union" that has close to the power of the "European Union" would be far less fair to Canada and Mexico that straight-annexation would be. The US as a whole is simply too powerful when bargaining with Canada and Mexico. Far better for them would be to get some votes in the Senate and House, so they could affect American policy from the inside.
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Tuesday, September 18, 2007
I think setting your goal to be no 1 is selling yourselves short. It also implies a hostile strategy towards competitors. While that can be a satisfactory tactic to weaken some small states it will often have negative impact on the overall strategy of making them into liberal democracies. A hostile strategy towards the major states will not only weaken your own economy but also increase hostility.
US power is only useful as a tool in furthering stability and wealth for all people and it can only achieve this aim by recognizing it as such.
Posted by: pokeraddict | Friday, October 05, 2007
To grow rich, faster, isn't a hostile strategy.
Certainly Russia should be weakened, but as a natural-resource producer, Moscow is more similar to Saudi Arabia or Iran than to India or China.
Posted by: Dan tdaxp | Friday, October 05, 2007
Well it can be if growing rich means doing it on someone elses expense, using military force. But really my only point was that by realizing that the ultimate goal isn't global dominance but global stability, democracy and general improvement some decisions might be made differently that will make conflicts less likely.
My idea about russia's is that it's a good thing if their trade grows if they were to simultaniusley make democratic reforms, but of course they are going in the other direction which I guess is partly because of the economic hardships during the 90's but also involves the conflicts in eastern eaurope, central asia etc. I'm obviously no expert on foreign policy but to me it seems that to move Russia forward the US must engage with them and listen to their concerns, perhaps if you did they would be more helpful with the Iran issue.
Posted by: pokeraddict | Friday, October 05, 2007
Canada has abundant natural resources (especially nuke energy), a highly educated population that has far more common sense than the population in the United States, a small population (which will be a gigantic plus in coming decades), and Canada will be a huge winner when the negatives of global warming start ripping the edges off the coastlines of the United States and turning its once bountiful farmland into deserts.
We'll be begging them to become new provinces. Fine they will say, as long as we acknowledge the true dimensions of a football field and accept hockey as the national sport, eh?
Besides, my brother is in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
Posted by: sonofsamphm1c | Saturday, October 06, 2007