if you believe in the American Dream then you better wake up because the only people that are dreaming are asleep...
i'll try to remember that as i watch my neighbors who live below the poverty line drive home in their 4x4s to watch their 1 television per person, use their high-speed internet and consume enough calories to feed a small african village for a week.
or did the American Dream change from enjoying an affluent lifestyle to having more money than 95% of your fellow Americans?
not to sound like a troll but do you really think voting does any good? the evidence seems to prove otherwise, i think its all smoke & mirrors...
one thing is sure: whomever wins the election, there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth crying "election fraud"
And claiming that there was no theft is the same, but doubly so:-) Come off it, nobody is making that claim. You direct your comment at me, but I certainly didn't say that.
The original claim was the US "stole" it's way forward, the counter-point stated US inventors powered our industrial revolution, and I finally suggested reality is a respectable somewhere in between. Don't be putting words in my mouth.
Now this is just getting silly. At what point is something "new" instead of "stolen"? Let's look at rockets, for example.
Rocketry had military applications for at least a century before the creation of greater Germany, I've seen a 19th century painting of British forces using crude rockets on the battlefield. One could say the Chinese invented rocketry because they had the first fireworks. Did the Americans "steal" their way to the moon from the Chinese?
Liquid fueled rocketry was pioneered by Robert Goddard, a US professor. His work was widely published and the Germans relied heavily on it. Tsiolkovsky's ideas preceded Goddard, it is unclear what details Goddard had access to (if any), and Goddard was the first to implement these ideas.
The premise has yet to be supported and as such requires no refutation. Someone stated a position and someone else scraped up an example. This falls painfully short. Perhaps anyone who subscribes to the original position merely feels it makes sense.
The counter argument is not so much a contradiction (there's pitifully little to contradict) as it is a counter proposal. Various examples which had well-documented, long-lasting effects leading to unprecedented growth of the 19th century economy have been supplied. Anyone who maintains a white-knuckled grip on the stolen technology premise has been free to point out how the listed phenomenon were, in fact, stolen.
In the end I am confident the honest researcher will find the US neither "stole" it's way toward the forefront nor devised it's own path. We invented neither trains nor automobiles, but Yankee ingenuity during that time was outstanding for a New World backwater, certainly worthy of inclusion among their European counterparts.
The casual charge of technology thief is rife with bias and laziness.
No, the argument was that America's rapid advancement during the industrial revolution was due to stealing technology from Europe, so a listing of several home-grown technologies that heavily contributed to US advancement is a fine response. A reasonable defense of the US-stole-it's-way-to-the-top premise might be to list instances of stolen technology on par with the home-grown list.
I'll add Andrew Carnegie, who quickly outpaced the British steel barons in technology and efficiency, to AC's list.
I guess I could have included a link on the population, but I felt that data is particularly accessible. The CIA World Factbook lists Russia's population at: 142,893,540 (July 2006 est.)
It'd be nice to annotate my other statements with sources but to do it nicely would require more time and effort than I can justify for an internet forum post I wrote in passing.
Someone else did disagree with my brain drain comment; for that I'll just say that when I worked for a major chemical company in R&D a couple years ago there were more Russians than any other foreign nationality, and speaking with them is my basis for the statement, NOT an independent study.
The Russians may have cheap labor, but that's only because a decent living and viable middle class is being denied them. Russia now has less than half the population of the old Soviet Union - less than 150 million and falling. So there they sit, on the greatest mass of land and resources of any nation with a population that barely bests that of Japan. Their greedy, self-serving Kremlin masters steal anything of value, triggering a tremendous brain-drain, withering the army, and rusting the navy. They are surrounded by energy-hungry nations and remain slaves to the classic Russian Paranoia handed down through the centuries. And, as usual, no matter who's running the place they always employ ham-fisted diplomacy and civil oppression.
They still have respectable infrastructure and an somewhat educated workforce to draw upon. Russia could be mighty, wealthy, and successful. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
if you believe in the American Dream then you better wake up because the only people that are dreaming are asleep...
i'll try to remember that as i watch my neighbors who live below the poverty line drive home in their 4x4s to watch their 1 television per person, use their high-speed internet and consume enough calories to feed a small african village for a week.
or did the American Dream change from enjoying an affluent lifestyle to having more money than 95% of your fellow Americans?
not to sound like a troll but do you really think voting does any good? the evidence seems to prove otherwise, i think its all smoke & mirrors...
one thing is sure: whomever wins the election, there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth crying "election fraud"
The original claim was the US "stole" it's way forward, the counter-point stated US inventors powered our industrial revolution, and I finally suggested reality is a respectable somewhere in between. Don't be putting words in my mouth.
Now this is just getting silly. At what point is something "new" instead of "stolen"? Let's look at rockets, for example. Rocketry had military applications for at least a century before the creation of greater Germany, I've seen a 19th century painting of British forces using crude rockets on the battlefield. One could say the Chinese invented rocketry because they had the first fireworks. Did the Americans "steal" their way to the moon from the Chinese? Liquid fueled rocketry was pioneered by Robert Goddard, a US professor. His work was widely published and the Germans relied heavily on it. Tsiolkovsky's ideas preceded Goddard, it is unclear what details Goddard had access to (if any), and Goddard was the first to implement these ideas.
The counter argument is not so much a contradiction (there's pitifully little to contradict) as it is a counter proposal. Various examples which had well-documented, long-lasting effects leading to unprecedented growth of the 19th century economy have been supplied. Anyone who maintains a white-knuckled grip on the stolen technology premise has been free to point out how the listed phenomenon were, in fact, stolen.
In the end I am confident the honest researcher will find the US neither "stole" it's way toward the forefront nor devised it's own path. We invented neither trains nor automobiles, but Yankee ingenuity during that time was outstanding for a New World backwater, certainly worthy of inclusion among their European counterparts.
The casual charge of technology thief is rife with bias and laziness.
No, the argument was that America's rapid advancement during the industrial revolution was due to stealing technology from Europe, so a listing of several home-grown technologies that heavily contributed to US advancement is a fine response. A reasonable defense of the US-stole-it's-way-to-the-top premise might be to list instances of stolen technology on par with the home-grown list. I'll add Andrew Carnegie, who quickly outpaced the British steel barons in technology and efficiency, to AC's list.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos /rs.html
It'd be nice to annotate my other statements with sources but to do it nicely would require more time and effort than I can justify for an internet forum post I wrote in passing.
Someone else did disagree with my brain drain comment; for that I'll just say that when I worked for a major chemical company in R&D a couple years ago there were more Russians than any other foreign nationality, and speaking with them is my basis for the statement, NOT an independent study.
The Russians may have cheap labor, but that's only because a decent living and viable middle class is being denied them. Russia now has less than half the population of the old Soviet Union - less than 150 million and falling. So there they sit, on the greatest mass of land and resources of any nation with a population that barely bests that of Japan. Their greedy, self-serving Kremlin masters steal anything of value, triggering a tremendous brain-drain, withering the army, and rusting the navy. They are surrounded by energy-hungry nations and remain slaves to the classic Russian Paranoia handed down through the centuries. And, as usual, no matter who's running the place they always employ ham-fisted diplomacy and civil oppression. They still have respectable infrastructure and an somewhat educated workforce to draw upon. Russia could be mighty, wealthy, and successful. Oh well.