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Comment by ilrwbwrkhv | Hacker News Reader

UK is also a massively failing economy though. Being bought by the middle east piecemeal.

It's not massively failing, just relatively stagnant, and it's not being bought by the middle east, that's just not the case.

Quatar (or "its ruling family") does own £10bn in properties?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2022/nov...

Yeah that's not that much, certainly not enough to warrant being called a "massively failing economy", otherwise so too was the US a massively failing economy in the 80s when Japan was buying everything up. Total property assets in the UK are worth £8.7 trillion. It says more about Qatar than it does about the UK, other than that the UK is a liberal capitalist democracy.

And it's quite the turnaround for Qatar in the last 50 years considering how they were once part of the British Empire. The Qataris still have a fascination with British things (e.g. Harrods).

Well, they have oil.

More like returning to a normal state, for a small ass island population with limited resources (all currently over concentrated in London). It's pure luck UK didn't end up like Madagascar.

I completely agree that it's returning to its "normal state" but disagree with the pure luck part. The UK is a declining empire, much like Spain and Portugal of past. They massively expanded their empire / Colonial holdings from the late 16th century all the way up to the WW1/2 era, at their peak holding sway over something like 25% of the world's population.

That wasn't luck, even if you consider it lucky that they are an island and were able to isolate themselves (while still being involved!) from the conflicts of continental Europe.

Now the empire is more or less gone and they've shot themselves in the foot with Brexit, they will become much like any other relatively isolated (economically) and resource poor developed nation.

My take on the Industrial Revolution is there was something valuable about the British … I am going to use the word … culture (#). That empire crumbled in the two wars (or one war with a half-time break) but the second “empire” of the USA picked up more or less the same place (Suez usually is the hand over point)

So yeah. We had a massive empire with global excess capital draining into London - now it’s mostly into NYC and SV.

(#) no that’s not supposed to be code for “white”. The Bank of England funded the monarchy’s wars so middle class capital held enough sway to hold the monarch off parliament which gave enough regional autonomy, courts supported capital investment over government, a growing middle class, widespread education, I mean it’s incredible it all held together. But I think a lot of what worked got sent by virus to the American Colony so by 1776 there were two simikar “cultures”.

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