[ExI] Worldwide reading habits (was: abandoning hope - the queuing experience)

[KAZ]

----- Original Message ---- 
From: giovanni santost <santostasigio at yahoo.com> 
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
Sent: Friday, November 2, 2007 5:15:02 PM 
Subject: Re: [ExI] Worldwide reading habits (was: abandoning hope - the queuing experience) 

> while I really appreciate the statistics you are showing us, I'm kind of skeptical about 
> such measures as I was after reading the ones you gave for economics. 
> For what concerns the economical ones, for example, it seems impossible that 
> several 3rd world countries are more "competitive" than Italy. 

As much as those statistics are desperately intended to make socialist countries look less pathetic, the Italy scenario is quite plausible. They have an extremely interventionist socialist government, and are bordering on third world in the "peasant" way much of their populace lives and economy runs.

> About the readings, again, statistics are fine, but believe me 
> every European (or anybody from anywhere else) that comes to US 
> immediately notices how uneducated people in general are. 

This isn't terribly surprising, because despite otherwise being more socialist, many European countries are less socialist in their education systems. They generally give parents some choice in where their kids are educated, for example, and even sometimes offer the vouchers that socialists in the US oppose.