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Comment by spindritf | Hacker News Reader

If you primarily rely on sources of information in English (of which I'm guilty, too) then obviously you will be mostly getting information from the Anglosphere dominated by the US because it's, oh you know, richest and most powerful country in the history of the world.

This is not some "Americans cover their successes" thing. It's that they matter more. There is an underlying economic reality in which we are lagging far behind them. Not Africa-far but still far.

In a picture http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac... from http://www.economist.com/node/21559618

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This effect even gets reinforced by the European journalists: a German speaking journalist will read German and English sources. A Spanish journalist will read Spanish and English sources, etc. Having the "lingua franca" is a huge asset for the Anglosphere. It not only affects the flow of news, it also leads to cultural dominance (everyone watches Hollywood movies, but European movies are primarily shown in their home countries, same goes for music). I would say that average Jean in many European countries knows more about the Anglosaxon legal system than their own one - just because they get exposed to TV shows about US lawyers all the time. The French try to fight that influence - but I think resistance is futile. Instead, the Europeans should try to find angles to inject their own views into the English news & culture stream. This leads to one large globalized, multi-cultural soup of values - but that's better than an Anglosaxon dominated soup of values. The times where each country could have their own soup are over.

Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work.

Language is the way we think, translating the way we think to one language changes how we think (i.e things are lost).

> The times where each country could have their own soup are over.

There are more people who don't care about the anglosaxon world than there are people who do care (China is a prime example here).

> Language is culture, good luck injecting chinese expressions into english... they just don't work.

Ni hao

English has a lot of loan words and imported phrases, and new ones are always on the horizon.

Clearly he means expressions, e.g. idioms and that sort of thing.

It's time to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu

Quick, without using Google tell me what I mean.

> Clearly he means

I wouldn't have posted if a different interpretation were clear.

Ni Hao is not an expression any more than Hello is.

Expression: a word or phrase, esp. an idiomatic one, used to convey an idea.

Indeed. I'm often amazed at the kind of American news reported by the Portuguese media and think "Why aren't we getting these news about European countries?". At the same time, I'm part of the problem: I know more about American politics than German politics, even though the latter affects me a lot more.

" richest and most powerful country in the history of the world..."

not even close

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-modern_great_powers

Does any of those countries come close to the GDP of, say, Alabama ($160bn)? Sure, comparing the value of organic wine form Rome to a car from Detroit is not straight-forward but technological progress and compound interest generally ensure that powers of today absolutely dwarf those of even a hundred years ago, not to mention a thousand years ago, or two.

The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at times. Today, most Americans are overweight.

I think he wants to compare the relative values. The Achaemenid Empire at its peak probably produced half of the world's goods.

> The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at times. Today, most Americans are overweight.

Problem not solved: the population still has problems being fed the right things for their health to improve.

GDP is a modern concept made to measure today's economy. But if you talk about power US is the most powerful country but not dominant (see Syria and Crimea).

The British empire at his peak held one fifth of the worlds population. The Roman empire conquered everything was worth conquering and he was providing free food and gigantic games to his poor citizens. If you consider modern Europe his GDP is very similar to the US, although his political situation is more fragmented.

So back to the OP in each era the economic conditions improved, and there was a place where this improvements was more evident, a country who was richer and more powerful than the others. US is one of these nations but it's not something exceptional in history as the OP suggested.

> The Roman empire conquered everything was worth conquering and he was providing free food and gigantic games to his poor citizens.

The Han dynasty coexisted with the Romans, and I think they had a lot more people and land in their empire.

The gross world product is about 72 trillion dollars. Alabama's share of that is 0.2%. In order to 'come close to Alabama', a historical power would have to be close to 0.2% of the world's GDP at the time. And I don't think any of the ones in that list went that low.

0,2% of the world's GDP in 2012 is a good measure for a comparison of Alabama to other modern countries in 2012, not a comparison of Alamaba 2012 to Rome 12 AD.

That's like saying that the last person on Forbes 500 is not really rich because they barely have 0.05% ($3 billion / $6 trillion) of the group's net worth.

Wealth is a relative measure, not an absolute one.

"That's like saying that the last person (blah)"

No, because relative to other people, they have more stuff. The proportion they have of the group's net worth is significant greater than almost all other members, who have generally have five or more orders of magnitude less wealth (0.0000005% and less).

The reason why you're having trouble converting from countries to individuals is because there's currently only 200 countries, but 7 billion individuals. That's why the individual's percentage looks lower.

Also, your comparison makes absolutely no allowance for inflation. GDP rises for everyone over time simply due to inflation. Your shekel could purchase more in the time of Herod than it could in the time of Netanyahu. Zimbabwe's GDP went through the roof in recent years in their own dollars; but it didn't as a comparison to the rest of the world's output.

I don't agree with you. To quickly cite another WikiPedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f...

How many of those figures are of the US?

Not trying to start a pissing contest. Sorry.

the OP is talking about nowadays US, so no Rockefeller, Ford and friends.

As it's difficult to compare richness through history I was focusing on relative power. Can someone challenge US now? yes: Russia, China, Europe. Some past empires didn't have any counterpart because they were too powerful for anyone.

China or Europe can challenge America? The Chinese can barely float a carrier and have only a few nukes. Europe depends of the USA for most of its defense. Russia counts, since this is the nuclear age with MAD and all, but it hardly counts if it's suicide.

Economically, china is still not into high income yet, while Russia is stuck in a natural resources trap with lots of corruption. Europe is quite fine though.

None of those pre-modern great powers could compete either economically or militarily with the modern United States.

Of course, they might have been relatively more powerful in relation to their contemporaries, but that hardly implies anything relevant about the modern era.

well it's pretty obvious that a gun is more efective than an arrow.

US is the most powerful country now, but it isn't dominant (see Syria, Crimea, etc..) and it not as dominant as the British Empire or the Roman Empire was at their time

So many disagree with this proposition because it does not convey the meaning you apparently intend. "Most powerful" might conceivably be a relative measure, but there's no way that "richest" is. Most nations of Europe (probably not Moldova, Slovenia, and a few others), on both a total and per capita basis, consume much more than anyone on that list. In a military contest most modern European nations would by more concerned about veterinary care for the enemy's horses, than the military outcome.

Next time you intend to make a relative statement, use the word "relative". Of course, that was not what the post to which you responded was discussing, so your post would have been more obviously beside the point.

as technology improves and time pass seems obvious that mankind is richer and have better military than the past. You can probably say that nowadays Slovenia could win against 1600 Spanish empire, so the only comparison that is reasonable a relative comparison, that's why I didn't specify.

I agree that it wasn't the main point of the post i was replying to but I found that point just smug and incorrect, backed-up with cultural bias rather than historical fact.

EDIT: sorry, I wasn't clear enough, my comparison was mostly in the "most powerful" part rather than "richest"

Of course it's relative. Power is about asserting your will, and inherent in that is having someone to assert it over. Saying that a modern country could beat a historical one in a war is silly.

It is interesting to note that in the 60 years that the US has been the ascendent world power, they've withdrawn from all sizeable wars with objectives unmet. If you're using actual active warfare as the yardstick, then the US is not powerful at all on comparison to historical powers. If you're using sensible measurements of power, then of course the US is powerful, most of it from projection of force and cultural/soft power.

> Most nations of Europe (probably not Moldova, Slovenia, and a few others), on both a total and per capita basis, consume much more than anyone on that list.

Be careful with Europeans, they get pissed off easily. Slovenia has a GDP (PPP) per capita of $28,195. While that's half of the US it is actually a lot, they're definitely not subsistence farmers in Mali. You cannot really compare it with Moldova - $4,182. First world versus close to third world :)

Point taken, but I already knew Slovenia > Moldova because hockey. I only qualified Slovenia because my statement was "total and per capita", rather than "per capita" only. It was probably still unnecessary, since even though they have a small population most historical empires did as well.

Well, you have to put that image into context. The US hasn't been devastated by 2 world wars. I'd say that the graph proves it - the first moment where the US was massively ahead was 1900-1925. Want to bet that 90% of the European companies from that period are pre-1914?

What is more worrying is 1976-2007 -> does that mean that things are ossified already? That there's no room for smaller companies to grow? I'd blame European conservatism for this together with US multinationals.

>Anglosphere dominated by the US because it's

Is because is perceived as such, regardless if it's true or not. Because under measures such as the GDP is far from the top[0]

[0]http://travel.fyicenter.com/Country/List_of_Countries_by_GDP...

We're talking about nations, not people, so I don't think "GDP per capita" is relevant. USA has by far the highest total GDP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...

Per-capita is way more important, a rich man doesn't need more than one toothbrush and it's detrimental for a country when other men can't afford a single one.

The question is "which country is the richest and most powerful". If we use the per capita statistics, Luxembourg is. That doesn't sound quite right, does it? If we look at the totals instead, the top ranks are USA, China, Japan and Germany. If you ask me, that seems more like what we're looking for.

Who is this "we" are you talking about? USA spends most of its income in military which is as dystopian as it gets, plus it haves 5.1 trillions in debt, while there are countries with no debt at all.

Insofar as domestic policy is concerned, per-capita is relevant.

Foreign policy, which is decided by governments that tax the aggregate population (and thus draw from the GDP)? Not in the slightest.

We are talking about foreign policy? I just found out, I would have swear we were talking about economical influence on international tech news coverage.

Your post was in response to a post that contained the statement, "the richest and most powerful country in the world."

Foreign policy, affected by GDP, certainly plays a role in this.

The Anglosphere is dominated by the US because it is dominated by the US. US population is 300M. UK is 60M. Canada 30, Aus 20, Ireland 6, NZ 4.

You begin with a valid point, that many English speaking technology blogs are US based, and therefore have a (valid) US bias.

That said, the idea that the coverage of US based acquisitions are inherently more important than elsewhere worldwide is utter nonsense.

As other comments point out, many, many large nontechnical acquisitions get very little coverage outside their respective channels. There are a handful of tech companies who have become media darlings and/or are considered within the community to be thought leaders or industry shapers, who make headlines with every move.

But the OP makes a great point, in that when some successful founders reach at least sudo celebrity status (eg: Jack Dorsey), and can be used as examples they can be magnets that encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs.

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