• anachronist@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Switzerland’s most innovative industries being mechanical watch escapements, asset hiding, and evading sanctions.

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      They food an innovative way of having a food company being declared a terrorist organization. Switzerland also is a charitable country. Companies like Glencore help poor countries exploited for their natural resources to do a better job of it. The chemical industry once nearly caought all eel in the Rhine at once. Well they were dead in the end anyway.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    I would expect because the US is a large country. In general, if you rank something in non-absolute terms, splitting a country up will tend to result in the component parts that rank above the average showing up higher. If you split the US up into states and measure each individually, you’ll probably have some that rank above the US average index score and some that rank below the US average index score.

    If one scored Europe as an aggregate, it’d similarly rank below its top two highest-scoring countries.

    • llothar@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This works both ways. In sure if you scooped Malmö out of Sweden it would pop up even higher. ;)

      No metric is perfect.

      • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Rhode Island probably. Nothing but a bunch of crusty old people and it’s tiny af.

    • crispy_kilt@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      This works for Switzerland too, not all of our cantons are the same, just like your states. Removing the less innovative ones will make us rank even higher.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        That’s true. The smaller the division relative to another, the higher probability that at least some will be above or below on a ranking list relative to the other.

    • spacecowboy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      No, because your country doesn’t gaf about innovation; just raising earnings for shareholders. Innovation isn’t required to do that.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      No, it looks like a DC-based think tank. I think that they’re aiming to talk to an American audience and to grab their attention by starting off giving an impression that US business performance isn’t competitive. The problem is that, as I point out in my top-level comment, it would be kind of unexpected if the US sat at the very top or bottom of a ranked list of smaller countries, because as long as whatever index metric he’s using can vary from country to country, you’d expect larger countries to be relatively-closer to the center of a distribution, all else held equal. So whatever policy he’s trying to promote (“more business infrastructure”?) he’s either leading with:

      • A mathematical error, which doesn’t really make me enthusiastic about spending time on reading through his argument.

      • An intentionally-dishonest argument, which makes me even less-enthusiastic.

      It’s like that “evolution doesn’t happen because nothing is living in your peanut butter jar” guy. Either he’s probably not in a position to be giving people advice, or he’s intentionally aiming to mislead them, and either way, his arguments probably are not really worth my time.

      If he had a sound argument to make, I’d kind of expect him to have made that argument instead.