I wasn't the one making the statement and I wasn't whining.

Lol you asked for a definition. Don't you remember? Look back a few posts.

Okay, howabout the optimal size is when the majority of people in each of the major regions are happy with the borders currently set for the country as a whole.


Do I really need to spell this out?

Do you thinking trying to pin this down opens up some amazing argument about how awesome the idea of the EU is? LOL.

I would assume it's finally dawned on him how much of a car crash this will be and a 2nd ref allows him to be a dissenting voice on the outside after calamity is avoided. i.e keep getting paid.

Car crash no deal Brexit = Farage not being able to walk down the street.

So you start by saying that current national borders are the ideal country size - with the patronising line "Do you see why?".

Then you say "It may suit the odd areas here and there, but every country in Europe? Pffft" - proving that you don't actually know what the EU is.

Then you say "Of course most countries are optimal size given history, geography, culture etc, otherwise they'd be different."

Then you harp on about intelligence.

If you seriously can't see how dumb that is then there is no point in arguing, and that is not just about you know knowing that EU nations are still different countries.

Honestly, I think he just wants to remain relevant for as long as possible. All Farage cares about is what he thinks is good for Farage.

I think farage is genuinely anti-EU and genuinely fears a sell-out on brexit. I dont think he is totally delusional about that. He also thinks leave will win a 2nd referrendum and he is right that that would resolve the issue for a generation.

Wow that's a lot of agreeing with Farage. Now let's give him what he wants and be ready for the politcal fight of our lives. I'm moderately hopeful that 2018 is the year that ehe calls for a 2nd referendum will beome a serious political noise. Biggest problem for the 2nd referendum campiagn is still that it's not at all clear that Farage is wrong about who would win.

you come across as someone asking 'why is a chicken the size it is?', and when you're told it's obvious, you don't like it, and feel it should be explained.


In that case, it's a biological evolution.

In the case of countries, it's cultural evolution.

still it's a common fallacy to think that what we have now is some special end point of evolution rather than having the same status as previous and future points of similar stability.

I'd argue that the evolutionary path is attracted to a constant size which is about interaction as well as physical geography. As we communciate more/faster and we trade more, the faster/closer interaction means the same size block is larger in physical size.

and yes, eventually a world government will come to the fore. WTO, UN etc are forerunners but the world hasn't become smaller enough yet.

oh and everything about the chicken is because it is delicious.

"and when you are old that it's obvious"? What exactly have you said, that because in most cases only a minority of people in each country would vote to actually split somehow or else combine with another country we can conclude that the boundaries are optimal? Can you seriously not see that the existing boundaries are a combination of historical factors, many of which can be broadly characterised as pure chance.

What you are saying, I think, is that "chance" has landed with some sort of optimal solution with your argument being that most countries aren't actively trying to change? That's barking mad imo. You are essentially saying that country boundaries are optimal because that's where they are now. This requires a definition of optimal that makes the statement meaningless.

Anyway, it's a redundant debate in itself as the EU is not a single country. If the UK stay then nobody is going to try to make you learn Polish or eat croissants. The desire for a single market comes from pretty simple economics.

If you don't want closer integration then fair enough, but the debate about optimal country size did get silly very quickly.

But you also need to add some curry. There's always one more ingredient to add to make things "complete".


* Oh - and Uruguay is just the right size for a country - Not too big (like Russia) and not too small (like Luxemburg). And it has beachfront property!

Not to mention that Uruguay is a nice shape. Not too long and thin like Chile, or worrying round like Sierra Leone. It may even be optimal.

Liberal economists are quite likely to say that improved communications, trade and interaction facilitate a smaller optimum nation size, not larger.

I think we see this in countries like Singapore topping league tables from wealth to education to quality of healthcare.

The fact that communications are better doesn't mean it's better than communicating within the same country.

You can obviously pick small countries from each end of the scale.

True, it doesn't necessarily mean that, it is a complex list of difficult to ascertain positives and negatives. But on balance it can be argued that as communications and free trade improve the economies of scale from some national operations no longer exceed the dis-economies of scale of big government and civil service.

That's true about small countries. But you can't pick any large ones consistently at the top of the lists.

I have no idea what "dis-economies of scale of big government and civil service" means - look at the USA (and the UK even) to see how you can allow for different regions of the same country.

I think it should be very obvious why the largest countries aren't at the top of the list. It's like those who haven't batted much in cricket being at the top and bottom of average listings, and you'd probably have to remove small countries that are just rich on the basis of oil to try to look for any correlation. If you did that I think you would see a small correlation between higher GDP and country size.

You think Singapore has better health service than us because it has a small sample size and got lucky?

You think that many countries of that size have better health care than us?

Then again, you think that the USA is an example of a large country failing despite the fact that when you chart ave GDP and size it's pretty much an outlier on the positive side.

Like I say, I'm pretty sure you can find a weak correlation between country size and high GDP per person. You appear to be literally looking at one country and trying to draw conclusions from that. Not great.

So, many key UK Brexiters (Farage/Johnson) are critisising those who comment on Trumps racism. Anyone who can't see the racism in these people really isn't looking very hard.

It's a good example of how the world has got smaller. There was a time when most of the world had no curry - now it's just the french. And unimaginably, India had no chilli.

I was able to find curry in France 10 years ago. I can't imagine it being harder to find now.

T'was a joke. You can even get a decent curry in Rome

Found best sushi in a hole in wall place in Rome come to think of it, like better than anything I had in Tokyo.

Does Carillion Bankruptcy Foreshadow Collapse of Theresa May's Government ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/w...g-britain.html

... or the end of "privatizing" vital Government services in the UK?

Conservatives (some conservatives) here in the United States are in favor of public-private "partnerships" for outsourcing of road and bridge projects and vital infrastructure such as airport renovations. This movement toward the private sector even includes proposals to takeover management and administration of Social Security, because "Well, you know, the Government is wasteful and can't do anything right." (Yep, Republicans think it's a good idea to let "Wall Street" run Social Security - even after the great job those folks did with Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps during the 2008-2010 financial crisis.) If we wind up going down that route, what do these same conservatives say when we have our version of a Carillion collapse? (I'm sure Republicans will figure out some way of blaming such a disaster on "libruls" and liberal policies ...) At any rate, any private sector screw up can be easily handled with another TARP-style taxpayer bailout.

Yup. Someday there will be no borders.

PFI was a bloody terrible idea.