Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 08:03:36 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> Cc: Juergen Nickelsen <jnickelsen@acm.org>, Drew Baxter <netmonger@genesis.ispace.com>, Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cool, A White Snowy Christmas in Sunnyvale, California 8) Message-ID: <83356.914256216@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 21 Dec 1998 13:56:49 GMT." <367E53A1.66F44F8@uk.radan.com>
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> 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! :) > 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! :) 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.). 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. Get Off Your Butts, you EC slackers! :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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