Well, to really know how things would pan out, you have to indeed do the thing.
And it happens that people will procrastinate with preparation. But as someone who does not and is fast at doing things I can tell you that if I want something done really fast preparation will be a good chunk of a projects time. If I want to toy around and the project doesn't matter that much, just doing the thing may do the trick.
Now the advice on that site aims to get people started with the actual work part and tries to do so by telling you preparation doesn't matter. That is not true. But it is true that people prepare forever because they are afraid to cross the threshold where they start translating grand ideas into concrete, protentially flawed reality. That means actually good advice would deal with the question where this fear comes from, how to address it and how to notice you have been preparing too long.
If you want to build a house, drawing the plans and finding the right location where to put said house is part of building a house. Or you could just mash bricks on top of each other in your backyard and then realize you forgot the foundation.
Yes, but if there is too much wealth concentration the country turns into an oligarchy.
Obviously there needs to be a balance. Each country needs to find it's own balance. The Norwegians have chosen their balance. Not everyone will be happy.
The article mentions 54 billion net worth left the country. I guess we'd have to look at who left to make any comments regarding startup founders or regulation manipulators.
Yes, there is a balance. The default assumption is that the wealthy fuck over their countries. I'm not quite so cynical (e.g. I think Buffett is nothing like Ellison).
The article is super biased (the site helps rich people get second passports).
We've got a few billionaires in New Zealand. I have very little idea about their influence on our regulations (although I suspect Peter Jackson might have had a positive influence - he's certainly generally helped our economy).
TBF, the industrial revolution started 250 years ago and the Merlin ceased production 75 years ago and has almost literally nothing in common with the Trent - not design, metallurgy, thermodynamic cycle, fuel...
Calling the referenced achievements ancient history isn't an unreasonable take, despite current successes.
There are lots of manufacturers in the UK right now who have fantastic quality. Rolls Royce aero engines. Lots of pharmaceuticals. Airbus wings and landing gear. Lots of cars as well. Medical devices. The list is endless.
The UK manufacturing sector was worth $279 billion in the last year.
That's all true. But the list could have been a lot longer. The UK had a lot more industry than it does today and there definitely were quality issues. At the same time: competition that wasn't even on the horizon back then (for instance: Korea) became a major factor and at some point you need the scale. For the UK driving on the left side of the road made that all of their exports had to be made for domestic or foreign use, foreign manufacturers often chose to simply not field a model in the UK, so that was an extra cost.
It's funny, I've a complete love/hate relationship with cars from the UK. I love them, love the looks, love to drive them. But I hate the unreliability that was part and parcel of it and I hated even more to buy a spare part and then to find out that it subtly didn't fit because of some defect in body geometry with as a result that it looked like crap (fenders... subframes... don't get me started on that one, I can bore you to death about the kind of crap they sold).
The Metro could have been what the 206 was for Peugeot, instead they made fairly nice design in the most cheap and unsafe way possible. In comparison the 206 was a little tank.
This is an under-appreciated point: the UK manufacturing sector is highly successful, but only where it doesn't employ large armies of workers, and is instead either automated or very small volume/large margin.
News coverage of this is, as expected, completely dire.
"The root cause in most industries is the same, there were just too many Labour supporters and the unions got too strong".
That's the conventional wisdom, but is it true?
It was the Thatcher government that shut down those industries. Maybe they didn't need to. There was a lot of collateral damage, privately owned suppliers that went bankrupt etc. A lot of countries have state subsidised industries, including the USA. GM was bailed out by the Obama government. Boeing and Tesla and SpaceX get tons of government money..
There is an interesting book by Tim Lankester, who was the chief economist in the Thatcher government. He has mixed feelings.
If you are interested, the book is:
Inside Thatcher's Monetarist Experiment by Tim Lankester
Thatcher didn't so much shut them down as turned off the life support subsidies. They were already dead, commercially.
A bailout isn't great and Obama was criticized for it, but it's not the same as ongoing state subsidies and outright nationalization. Boeing and SpaceX get oney for selling the government unique services. The USA has historically not gone in for subsidies of industries like steel and coal, and that's one reason it's ahead.
Free trade is not a cold rational economic choice. It is a political choice. It is a choice to put more money into the hands of the capitalist class, by means of improving their investment returns at the expense of that country’s industrial capacity.
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