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On March 05 2020 01:45 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 00:37 Gorsameth wrote:On March 04 2020 23:53 Artisreal wrote:
I find it funny because the EU's reaction is really harsh, something he'd appreciated as closing borders.
But that was a click too many, a thought too much. Sad. Its the only real answer the EU has. Turkey has been threatening to swamp the EU in refugees for a while and their now turning it into action. The only answer is to close the border or let Turkey bully the EU around. What I hope the EU does is actually take active measures against this bullying. Sanctions, limiting tourism, that sort of thing. A dictatorship on our border is trying to threaten us. The EU needs to be less afraid to bite back a bit. Erdogan definitely could do with being slapped about a bit for sure. Hopefully the refugees aren’t the ones to suffer with all of this though.
They are already suffering on the Greek border. Unfortunately they are being used as a weapon by Tayyip who declared war on Europe... Some people are just too stuck in their ways to realize it. As always, western Europe is completely spineless and is willing to give him even more money while providing only verbal support to Greece who is effectively defending their borders on its own.
btw There are reports of Turkish soldiers throwing gas against the Greek army.
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You can argue that the support is inadequate, but it's unfair to say that the EU is "providing only verbal support to Greece who is effectively defending their borders on its own". I admit I might be wrong on this one because I spent less than 60 seconds on digging up the article below and didn't feel like there's a need to dig deeper.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday the bloc would provide Greece "all the support needed". "Those who seek to test Europe's unity will be disappointed. We will hold the line and our unity will prevail," von der Leyen said, standing alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the chiefs of the European Council and European Parliament. Von der Leyen said the bloc would provide 700 million euros ($777m), half of it immediately, to help manage the refugee situation. In addition, the EU border agency Frontex will deploy a rapid intervention team including an additional 100 guards backed by coastal patrol vessels, helicopters and vehicles, she said. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/eu-throws-support-greece-refugee-conflict-turkey-200303163750374.html
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On March 08 2020 04:24 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2020 00:48 Sent. wrote:On March 08 2020 00:16 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
That sad moment when you look at the map and UK is no longer included.
Why is it suprising? Looking at it, it seems that most regions of Spain and Portugal for instance has higher GDP per capita in PPS than most of "east Europe" that has a spot of red surrounded by a sea of light blue. So it's a matter of distribution. I find it surprising that Greece and Portugal have no red at all. Not even light red. Like they don't have "workhorse" regions that could pull their economies forward. It's not that bad in Spain, so I shouldn't lump it together with the two. Madrid would probably be dark red without its surrounding areas. Well, your conclusion is just not true: https://theatlas.com/charts/ByzcK_wKAlso I would say it is debateable if an above average capital city (or other economic centre) is actually contributing to the wealth of a country. I would argue that singular strong economic centres are actually a problem for the country, because they suck a lot of human capital into themselves, which bleeds out the rest of the country, while forcing the (young) people that (have to) go into the cities (for economic reasons) to give up their social networks and capital inheritance mechanisms. These big power conglomerates usally exist in former communist countries where the state centralized power and in countries that have been trying to apply liberterian policies for extended period of time. They cut state expenses for road/rail/internet infrastructure or farmers, or direct subsidies for municipalities in favor of lower taxes or less state debt, which naturally means that people flee the provinces because their current standard of life cannot be upheld. What's going on with Berlin? Germany without Berlin is economically better off.
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I would strongly argue that not having your capital city being totally dominant is a good thing.
Berlin is a unique case because its basically a bottomless money pit since WW2 but having Paris so dominant in France, a big country that is pretty densely populated all over, seems absolutely horrible to me.
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Northern Ireland25715 Posts
On March 09 2020 23:18 Velr wrote:
I would strongly argue that not having your capital city being totally dominant is a good thing.
Berlin is a unique case because its basically a bottomless money pit since WW2 but having Paris so dominant in France, a big country that is pretty densely populated all over, seems absolutely horrible to me.
Or London, or basically any capital that looms like a colossus over the rest of a country. There are quite a few detrimental consequences to such an arrangement, IMO anyway.
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The most interesting in this Graph is imho Austria. Vienna is absolutely huge population wise yet its importance seems pretty low in comparison. But depending on how this data is gathered (strict city limits?) its absolutely worthless anyway.
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On March 10 2020 00:31 Velr wrote:
The most interesting in this Graph is imho Austria. Vienna is absolutely huge population wise yet its importance seems pretty low in comparison. But depending on how this data is gathered (strict city limits?) its absolutely worthless anyway.
As you say, it depends a lot on how the city limits are defined. Some of the richest Austrian regions are the city outskirts of Vienna the so called "bacon belt" - which is nominally a part of Lower Austria, an economically rather weak region.
But then again Vienna is also a part of the weak Eastern regions of Austria and additionally heavily suffering from the very close and very cheap Eastern European markets (many big Austrian firms have outsourced their labor to regions like Bratislava). Meanwhile the Western regions like Salzburg, Vorarlberg and Tyrol are quite rich, in particular due to winter tourism. E.g. The 500k inhabitant state of Tyrol has almost 50 Million overnight bookings per year, which is almost the same number the 8,5 Mio inhabitant Switzerland has all together.
So this may even include the rich city outskirts and still be plausible.
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Holy... I would imagine this would require some type of military help to enforce.
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On March 09 2020 23:18 Velr wrote:
I would strongly argue that not having your capital city being totally dominant is a good thing.
Berlin is a unique case because its basically a bottomless money pit since WW2 but having Paris so dominant in France, a big country that is pretty densely populated all over, seems absolutely horrible to me.
I wonder about that. In the first place economic activity are the reasons why cities occur. For whatever reason businesses tend to occur in cities and more businesses seems to beget more businesses, whether it is because the suppliers or customer base exists there or a unique resource. people move to cities becuase that's where the jobs are, ever since the industrial revolution. Is it particularily detrimental to the people in a country that there is an area that is highly productive that exists where businesses can set up, where job exists, where competitive advantage can exist against other countries?
Can it be said that a less dominant city, not neccessarily the capital, would improve the economy or the lives of people within that country? There's nothing to indicate that if the advantages of a single city disappeared, would the life of the people in that country would improve. Like much of economic and well being indicators there is no real way of taking experimenting as such. Even comparisons will run into difficulties by way of accounting for all factors.
That is not to say densely populated cities do not cause problems such as housing and air quality.
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I'm not against cities.
I'm against cities in big countries dominating everything that goes on there.
When I was 3 Months in France it seemed like a spiral of doom to me.
The (hour long) daily TV-News to me felt kinda like this: Paris is important so we talk about Paris, there was also a flood but its not in Paris while the politicians dealing with the flood are in Paris so lets interview someone in Paris, we also should invest more into Paris because Paris is our Capitol. Also someone hit a Busdriver in Paris, so the Bus drivers all over the countrie went on strike but this was obviously mainly a problem for Paris.
It honestly felt like no one cared about anything else than Paris aside from local news (for obvious reasons) and even there Paris loomed behind every corner.
I stayed in a town with about 40'000 inhabitants a few Hours away from the next big city (Bordeaux), so maybe this sqewed my perspective..
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I don't think there is a categorical answer for every case or even anything necessarily good or bad about having a dominant capital in the country. In the UK I think there's a strong structural element to it. It's an island, London has emerged as a centre of global commerce and finance and entry/exit point for trade so it's sort of inevitable. Same for any other entrepot economy. Germany is more decentralised because it sits in the middle of Europe with trade into all directions, lots of regional characteristics and so forth.
With France, it's hard to tell I suppose. You could argue it's the 'Latin' culture of centralisation and political class towering above everyone else but then again you can also argue that the political class emerged because Paris became so dominant so it's not clear what cause and effect is.
Either way whether it's good or bad depends on if you can leverage the status of those cities, redistribute gains adequately and don't neglect the rest of the country. It's not like getting rid of Paris would make France better off, so the question is just how to fix the political system.
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I don't think it's "Latin culture of centralisation". Italy is right after Germany on BigJ's list and it's not a coincidence. Both countries were unified much later than everyone else, which allowed its regional capitals to develop faster at the cost of not having a powerful capital region.
My guess why Paris is so influential is that France was the first big medieval power with strong and centralised government.
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I went to an American school but I was under the assumption that the medieval era was about the lack of a strong and centralized government.
Paris is so influential because of the infrastructure built up over time to take advantage of the rivers that can connect to the seine. Trade flowed through the city so it became so important and then nothing really else mattered. The size of the capital cities didn't really come through until sewers and railroads made it possible.
Just look at England. York used to actually be a super major city until the rail lines all went to London.
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On March 11 2020 06:29 Sent. wrote:
I don't think it's "Latin culture of centralisation". Italy is right after Germany on BigJ's list and it's not a coincidence. Both countries were unified much later than everyone else, which allowed its regional capitals to develop faster at the cost of not having a powerful capital region.
My guess why Paris is so influential is that France was the first big medieval power with strong and centralised government.
Not as easy as that either. France was a medieval power, but its central government at the time was very weak. Occitania for instance, wasn't even part of France for most of the middle ages. There were crusades to conquer it. It was only really from Louis XIV onwards that Paris became the "center" of France. But from then on, French rulers definitely centralized more and more.
Spanish rulers attempted to emulate that, to varying degrees of success. Like France, Spain's transportation networks all go through the capital. The train network between Barcelona and Valencia, the second and third cities in Spain, is an embarassment, and the only reason Barcelona has a decent connection to Zaragoza is because it's on the way to Madrid...the train onwards to Bilbao is a miserable slow thing. The north coast itself is probably better connected to Madrid than among itself. But yeah, Spain has centralized power, but the economy is fairly decentralized. There are obviously poor regions, but I'm not even sure Madrid is the richest region of Spain. It may very well be Bilbao and the Basque Country in general.
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Yes, I should put that differently. I agree that it was the absolute monarchy that made Paris extraordinarily powerful.
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That wasn't what either of us said at all. Absolute monarchies came about very late in the medieval era when Kings became emporers and their subjects couldn't seize power from them anymore.
Paris became powerful because the countries economic infrastructure was purposely developed to empower it. they build Canals and roads between rivers in order to feed those rivers trade into Paris instead of other better suited cities like Marseille.
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I agreed with Acrofales who said that it was Louis XIV and his successors who "centralized more and more". That centralised government (which happened to be an absolute monarchy) then chose to develop the country's economic infrastructure in a way that would empower the capital region. If I made it look like I'm saying it's something only absolute monarchies could do then I apologise for confusion.
I was wrong to bring up the middle ages in this context.
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On March 11 2020 06:29 Sent. wrote:
I don't think it's "Latin culture of centralisation". Italy is right after Germany on BigJ's list and it's not a coincidence. Both countries were unified much later than everyone else, which allowed its regional capitals to develop faster at the cost of not having a powerful capital region.
My guess why Paris is so influential is that France was the first big medieval power with strong and centralised government.
Its the other way around. Italian and garman city states were strong and indpendent, that is why it took so long for unification to happen. They were important centers of trade, economic and cultural and sometimes military powerhouses since late middleages at least.
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@Dutch people: is your Prime minister still sticking to his "herd immunity" strategy regarding the coronavirus? Is there a national debate about that?
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EPT
