Our Knowledge Economy, As A Nation We Lead The World!

[1929crash]

Read Fantasy Island ,its on amazon,has a good bit about this old chesnut,or better put complete lie.

One of the chapters is called Bullsh1t Britain.

[aa3]

Knowledge is only a means to an end. We should keep our knowledge innovation internal, as a way to give our domestic industry an advantage. (this is what Germany and Japan do). You ever hear of Japanese companies liscencing inventions out to foreigners to produce?

[ralphmalph]

Knowledge is only a means to an end. We should keep our knowledge innovation internal, as a way to give our domestic industry an advantage. (this is what Germany and Japan do). You ever hear of Japanese companies liscencing inventions out to foreigners to produce?

Blu Ray - HD-DVD to name but 2.

[Gone baby gone]

The knowledge we were relying on was 'house prices always go up'.

[SHERWICK]

The decent thing is then not to let a load of unskilled foreigners in to take the unskilled jobs that our own gammas and deltas need. It's also in our interest because we'll be the ones forking out the dole money for the people who could be plumbers if it weren't for the Poles etc.

That's nationalism btw.

Quite a few of these Poles working in building etc. are actually skilled (degrees and Masters in Science subjects like Physics) who can't get jobs in Poland that pay enough, so come (or maybe that should be 'came') over here to earn more money.

[50%deposit]

how about the virtual economy? i bet were doing well in that, a complete virtual economy fabricated entirely out of make believe with huge piles of virtual gold, just like in Runescape.

Anyone play Runescape?

[General Melchett]

I've heard that a knowledge aconomy is likened to everyone taking in their neighbour's brain washing.

Couldnt let this go uncommented: It is a very good analogy: You cant run an economy on the basis of taking in eachothers washing.

[Nationalist]

Quite a few of these Poles working in building etc. are actually skilled (degrees and Masters in Science subjects like Physics) who can't get jobs in Poland that pay enough, so come (or maybe that should be 'came') over here to earn more money.

The nationalist view is that we should look after our own even if immigrants are in every respect better. A Polish PhD should not be allowed to put a native drongo out of work.

[CrashedOutAndBurned]

The knowledge economy:

'Y'know, like, I can kind of, uh, do you a website or a, like, club flyer or DJ for your silent disco with my laptop, or make a photo look like a Warhol print and that, stencil a tshirt, that kind of thing...'

[SHERWICK]

The nationalist view is that we should look after our own even if immigrants are in every respect better. A Polish PhD should not be allowed to put a native drongo out of work.

Sensible policies for a happier crappier Britain!

Edited January 21, 2009 by SHERWICK

[clubberdude]

What happened to our knowledge economy? Thought we were leading the world, not heard Gordon mention this lately!!

Why its been watered down by relentless dumbing down, university expansion, degree devaluation, removal of incentive to develop etc.

NuLabour have all but made it pointless to advance, by devaluing qualifications, saddling people with silly amounts of debt to study, attempting to push far too many people through the higher education system, and failing to develop apprenticeships as a real and credible alternative to university study.

Additionally, many new graduates are likely planning to emigrate.

The knowledge industry is key to the UK's recovery out of this downturn/recession/depression, as this will be instrumental to developing new high-tech industries and innovation.

Sadly, thanks to Labour, theres very little chance of this happening, as the incentives and opportunities are not going to be there.

[wonderpup]

The 'knowlege economy' is based on the absurd and racist premise that white people are essentialy smarter and more creative than yellow or brown people- information is the most portable and easy to replicate resource on the planet- there is no way to prevent the people with the factories educating their children- they can certainly afford to do it.

[ralphmalph]

The 'knowlege economy' is based on the absurd and racist premise that white people are essentialy smarter and more creative than yellow or brown people- information is the most portable and easy to replicate resource on the planet- there is no way to prevent the people with the factories educating their children- they can certainly afford to do it.

This is the silliest post I have seen on HPC and I have seen a few.

How many pints have you had tonight?

[wonderpup]

This is the silliest post I have seen on HPC and I have seen a few.

How many pints have you had tonight?

As I understand it, the idea is that, while the peasants of china and india slave in the factories, we can compete with their low wage productivity by instead applying our intelligence and creativity to pay our way in the world.

Thus our competitiveness is based upon the assumption that the peasants will not have the ability to apply their own intelligence and creativity, and will need to buy in their knowlege and creativity from us.

This is to adopt that position that the chinese and indians are basicly less intelligent and/or creative than we are, which is an implicitly racist notion.

In reality, of course, the chinese and indians will be perfectly capable of innovation on their own- they will not need to pay us to do it for them.

You can't build an economy around a resource that is freely available to your competitors, and the shocking news is that intellgence and creativity are not qualities only found in the brains of western europeans.

[huw]

I've heard that a knowledge economy is likened to everyone taking in their neighbour's brain washing.

Very good. I will probably steal that at some point

[aa3]

The 'knowlege economy' is based on the absurd and racist premise that white people are essentialy smarter and more creative than yellow or brown people- information is the most portable and easy to replicate resource on the planet- there is no way to prevent the people with the factories educating their children- they can certainly afford to do it.

Great post.. Its hard to replicate a 3 billion dollar steel plant - especially once a lot of it gets paid down. And also for a nation like India where interest rates are like 15% for corporate borrowing. Its easy to replicate a knowledge job that generally requires office space, a computer, and servers. Cost maybe 10,000 pounds per worker.

Imagine that steel plant I mentioned had 3,000 workers. That is 1,000,000 pounds investmnet per worker. Not easy for a developing nation to replicate. The main cost is not labour, but the cost of the capital in the interest rates.

[wonderpup]

But in reality, the quality of your output will be based on experience, character, knowledge, wisdom...

China is the oldest civilisation on the planet, I doubt they lack these qualities.

[Buy Toilet]

The idea of the knowledge economy ignores the two-way relationship between invention and manufacture. I've yet to meet someone who can learn to ride a bicycle from looking at engineering drawings of one. Pragmatic engineering solutions come from engineers with some connection to the process of making the end product.

In most of the high-tech industries such as microelectronics it strikes me that it is very hard to stay in the game without an understanding of manufacture. If you ship that abroad you lose that connection. That's why Intel keeps a site in the US and Japan's high tech firms keep at least some production at home.

Break that connection and over time your knowledge doesn't keep pace with changes in manufacturing.

[GregG]

He said "no ledge" economy.

So when we fall over the cliff there is nothing to grab onto in order to break our fall on the way to the rocks below.

[workingnomad]

The 'knowlege economy' is based on the absurd and racist premise that white people are essentialy smarter and more creative than yellow or brown people

I think it is based on that fact that it's all we have to offer.

[Cogs]

OK. So.

I'm aware of the level of groupthink here so I will emphasise from the start this is not advocacy.

I'm merely explaining it to you.

The concept behind the "knowledge economy" is best seen via casestudies eg., Rover.

I had a 214, J plate. What they were selling when they went out of business was the same car with a slightly different body shell, 14 years later. No wonder nobody wanted it. The concept was a knowledge economy would mean they'd have been producing a world-leading product instead. The concept behind the "knowledege economy" was that it would facilitate manufacturing and industry; nothing could be more "nuts and bolts" or "pack it and shove it on a ship". The idea was it would encourage just this behaviour.

It wasn't in itself a bad idea, its just it got perverted, first by the Tories and then by New Lab.

[MarkG]

"Knowledge economy" is not based on intelligence, but experience.

And, uh, where do you get engineering experience from in a country that doesn't do engineering anymore?

The 'knowledge economy' is just another ******** idea to stave off collapse; Chinese companies are hardly going to be running to Britons in twenty years to tell them how to build better factories, when Britain has no factories. And if Britain did have vital, valuable knowledge that the Chinese didn't, then selling it to them would be retarded in the first place.

[@contradevian]

And, uh, where do you get engineering experience from in a country that doesn't do engineering anymore?

The 'knowledge economy' is just another ******** idea to stave off collapse; Chinese companies are hardly going to be running to Britons in twenty years to tell them how to build better factories, when Britain has no factories. And if Britain did have vital, valuable knowledge that the Chinese didn't, then selling it to them would be retarded in the first place.

Well they did buy Rover plant, tooling and designs. Also the Chinese needed a lot of Rover staff to set up the lines. I suppose thats an example of the "Knowledge economy" as facililator for manufacturing.

However Rover was a one off. We don't have a (mass) motor industry left to sell again and doesn't (as far as I'm aware) bring in foreign currency for years from any intellectual property rights or patents.

[steve99]

The issue is that people below a certain level of inteliigence can not be part of the knowledge based economy. We are very good at certain things. Formula one car design which rubs off on to general car design as well. Building carbon fibre wings for planes (something the Yanks can not get right with the 777), Jet Engines, etc.

The issue is that we have a large section of the population that can not be part of the knowledge economy and do not want to flip burgers.

I believe the Labour govt knew this hence the mass of people lost on benefits, it was their way of keeping them quiet and stopping them rioting. Pay them enough on benefits so they can live (just), smoke, get drunk and shag.

Hence when we needed some more knowledge workers we imported 500K from eastern europe who all seemed to get jobs no problem.

The days of semi intelligent people with brawn earning a decent wage i.e mining, semi skilled manufacturing or construction are long gone hence the Knowledge based economy leaves these people on benefits.

There are many people now out of work, or working in silly jobs like low to mid level finance related buisnesses or McJobs who formaly worked in industrial jobs. Many of these jobs required a much higher level of intellegence and knowlege than the vast majority of replacement jobs. I used to work in industrial electronics, followed by computer hardware (component level) and then in mid level IT support work. In terms of intellegence needed the electronics topped the lot whereas the IT support required a massive amount and breadth of knowlege but not a huge amount of intellegence. To export many of these jobs on account of that it suits people like you and big buisness for reasons of greed will, in the long run be just plain stupid.

As I found out, that when applying for stupid jobs when your intellegent job has been exported to India, and you are competing with a pole near half your age, then Pole wins the job. Not only that, the only way the pole benefits is via the financial differential between the UK and Poland, they dont do it on account of 'Being better' and they do get the jobs on account of employer discrimination. The average person cannot live on the minimum wage and for so many people to praise the Poles on this account is just arrogance, they need to try the minimum wage for themselves, Poles can do it by living 10 to a flat, how many people over the age of 30 can do that?.

This process has little to do with NuLabour in isolation, more to do with the greed and whims of big buisnesses and the banks who found an odd ally with the Labour goverment. I say odd ally on account of this being the turf of the tories who would have varied very little from Labours policies.

Edited January 22, 2009 by steve99

[Della]

Anyone could be Prime Minister, right? All you have to do is make some policies, give a few press statements, go to a few meetings....

But in reality, the quality of your output will be based on experience, character, knowledge, wisdom...

In reality prime ministers are not put in office based on that, its more about interesting sounding speeches and selling yourself. They all say you have all the above qualities, but this is mostly a method of getting themsleves to the top of the greasy pole.

That's the true meaning of the knowledge economy. Not about what you know that you can find in a book, but what you know that the guy next to you doesn't (because you've done it before and he hasn't).

Like I said, I'm not suggesting it's a good idea for a nation to completely outsource manufacturing and labour for non-jobs a la UK Plc, but there is an awful lot of toss spoken about knowledge economy on these threads...

The longest that strategy can possibly last is about 10-20 years, after that they will have thier own experience with manufacture, and you as a country will have no experience as you aren't doing that kind of thing anymore...the people with the experience have retired or gone on to something more profitible than telling stories of what they did a long time ago, like working in a nail salon.

If you are at the leading edge, or just on the ballpark in high tech or complicated industry, the only way to maintain any sort of position is to hang onto what you've got like your life depended on it. It doesn't even really matter if what you have has become old hat, as it is much easier to modernise your way back to the leading edge from having an old hat product than having nothing.

Take for example what happened in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed etc, a lot of what they were doing in manufactured products etc, even though it was very old hat and uncompetitive just trundled along because they had nothing better to do. Now Russia, in the present day has a capacity to do things, and produce things they could never dream of doing if they were starting from scratch as they just could never afford it .

Compare the UK and Russia putting a man on the moon, Britain is a much richer country than Russia, but it would take Britain probably 15-20 years on its own if it put its full effort into doing that, it would be ridiculously expensive. If Russia put its full effort to putting a man on the moon they could do it in about 6 months to a year, since they happen to have everything they need to do that just lying around, they could maybe do it for 200-400 mil. If Russia had shut down its space industry for a while whilst it had the financial problems, or sold it to someone else to balance the books, they would never ever have been able to get it back.

Edited January 22, 2009 by Della