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Comment by r_thambapillai | Hacker News Reader

Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable.

By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.

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> there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore

There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership.

It isn't clear UK public ever really grappled how insufficient their leadership theory is. Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking although it is mirrored by low standards in the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...

I think it was more about economics than competency.

By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which led to the US Dollar the worldwide reserve currency.

If the UK wants to pretend that WW2 (or, indeed, WW1) happened like a shock storm, unforseen and unforseeable, with no involvement from them they are welcome to do that. The result of that attitude was that the UK parliament was only allowed to govern a small and increasingly irrelevant island with lousy weather and steadily worsening economic prospects instead of a global empire.

There is a lesson for people governing global empires here - don't allow major wars to blow up on your borders. Or, ideally, anywhere. Maybe spend some time promoting peace and prosperity. Train the diplomats in diplomacy.

You'll notice that the US solution at the end of WWII was completely different to the European settlement at the end of WWI. And the US approach to warring was a lot more staid than the UK's. These are basic matters of competence.

Indeed. Choose peace if possible instead of rushing into war. Nothing that happened in the Balkans was important to the UK.

Nothing important Sudetenland, nothing important in Austria, nothing important in Poland. They tried your strategy in the 30s and it was not a success.

Are the Sudetenland, Austria, and Poland in the Balkans?

Possibly Balkans themselves were not important. The trade routes in Mediterranean likely were.

Also, there was a complex web of international treaties and alliances that eventually pulled the UK into the war.

This was back in the day when alliances, particularly European ones, meant something.

Also, family ties. European monarchs were a really tight bunch. For instance, the tzar of Russia and the king of the British Empire at the time of WWI were brothers.

> For instance, the tzar of Russia and the king of the British Empire at the time of WWI were brothers.

They were first cousins, along with the German Kaiser they went to war with.

Some fair points, but remember that the US had the benefit of knowing that post-WW1 settlement was a failure. Of course, Wilson did object to the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, so it's fair to say the US had a better perspective from the start -- though one can argue that the US' own failure to ratify the League of Nations was a contributing factor to WW2.

Another key factor is that the US had no empire to hold together, and, to its credit, wisely did not seek to expand its territory after WW2 in order to create one (which it could have easily done, and which the UK had done many times before).

The us wants at the end of wwi were similar to what we got with wwii.

How do you get the land for your empire to begin with, with peace and diplomacy? I guess war is a hard habit to break

British weather is great. Enough rain to keep the land green and pleasant, temperatures that don't get too hot nor too cold - the very definition of temperate.

We aren't without our annoying and extreme weather though. Eg in the north of England last week it was -10c for a few nights and a week of 0/1c daytime temperatures with a biting wind chill. Before that was heavy snow and ice.

Heat waves up to 35-38c aren't unheard of. Our houses aren't built for this so a heatwave is quite uncomfortable as houses stay 20-25c overnight

Plenty of flooding in various parts

This autumn and winter has seen a lot of storms

The south fares much better of course and without as much flooding

I have a solid sheet of grey clouds over my head for what feels like 300 days of the year - would happily take some of that variability!

It's interesting that incompetence ... Fabians started in 1884 and a lot of insanely destructive ideas seem to defend from those circles. We don't have the great leap forward it's slower but something as bad on a longer timescale

Yep. UK had post-war rationing longer than Germany did! Fabians were largely to blame for this state of affairs. UK caught back up, just about, in the 1980s, but the Conservatives went to seed at the start of the 90s and never really got fixed. It's the oldest political party in the world so it took a long time for people to give up on them but that's now finally happening.

Unfortunately the smear tactics against Farage over the years have been quite successful especially against the older generation that relies more heavily on TV for news. UK might face another election where the right splits their vote and Labour walk in again. Many decades of decline would be compounded at that point, putting the UK into more of a second world position.

> Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking

How many PMs has the UK been though in that time? _Way_ more than the average Western country. We don't accept poor oerformers more than anywhere else, we kick them out of office - but the talent pipeline is abysmal so the next one is usually awful too.

I'd say ruin - in great part from the costs of two World Wars - came before the end of the Empire. Wikipedia notes of WWII - "Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75 billion loan from the United States". Vs. the Partition and dissolution of the British Raj were in 1947.

Most of the world's gold was in the US by the end of the war.

The flow of gold into the US starting in 1933 is thought to be why the Great Depression was moderating so much there and then: the money supply was inflating.

Not greatly different from Germany or Nordic countries, or EU average, and better than France or Japan.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Its a Europe wide problem.

Switching to % change - EU beats US.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

That is a better graph, but the conclusion I would draw is much the same.

The EU gets a boost from the inclusion of Eastern European economies that have been fast growing from a lower base.

If you compare the US and the UK to the four biggest EU economies, the US is doing best by far, and the UK is doing better than three and worse than one:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

If that's adjusted for cost of living and inflation then isn't that hiding the actual economic changes? If GDP falls then cost of living would likely go down and vice versa.

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