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I wanted this discussion to be broader, but it went down to who is more insulted and beating chests with fists. Well, lets do it.
Discussion can be as broad as you want ;) We can beat chest and make Tarzan noises too though:aargh:

First thing to specify from the start is that when talking about the "greatest," I (and I think cavscout too) am talking about the current "greatest" not the greatest of all time. If cavscout means something different let him say so.

So anyway you raised some good points for discussion...
I could have said China, is greater nation than USA because of their vast numbers superior number of citizens.
I would say the relative poverty of China cancels this out. No woman will say "He is the greatest man because he comes the fastest and gets me pregnant so quick." Its the opposite in fact:lol: Sure China is good at having lots of children, but look how poor they are fed :sad:. China's low relative per capita GDP undermines the points for their high population.
Or because they produce more goods than USA.
Yes they do, but for whom? My point is that you dont go to a restaurant and see the cooks making plate after plate of food for the rich patrons sitting at the tables and say "See how much greater the cooks are than the patrons! Look how much food the cooks produce, while the patrons produce nothing... just sit there and eat!" Who is greater? The servant who toils to produce or the consumer/master who enjoys what the servant produces? Obviously the consumer is greater, because the consumer is the master.
Or because they have 5000 years of history and culture compared to less than 300 years USA history.
Ethiopia and Iraq are some of the oldest regions in the world (in terms of human habitation)... and still the poorest. Age is not a good measure of who is the greatest. Wealth and power are far better measuments.
Or Russia being greater nation for occupying way more territory than USA.
Antarctica is the second largest territory. So what? Its all ice. Canada is the largest area in North America... but again, just alot of ice and frozen wilderness... Same for Russia... big, but mostly just frozen wasteland. I can't agree with measuring greatness by who has the most frozen tundra. Better to go by fertile, useable, inhabited lands.
Or the Greek nation for having created the Western culture,
Greece is bankrupt and in chaos, they can't be the greatest.
or Roman nation for being world empire 1000+ years compared to USA's 100 years of world empire.
Rome (as a nation) doesn't even exist anymore, so they can't be the greatest.
Or the English nation, for having spread their culture and language all over the world - in USA included.
Right but the United States defeated England. So if they are so great, then th US must be even greater for kicking their @ss, right;)?
After all, in USA the official language spoken is English.
Now this one I can tell you is just dead wrong. The United States has no official language or religion. As Spanish becomes more and more popular, and other religions too, our conservative politicians are always arguing for Constitutional amendments to make English the official language and Christianity the official religion but they always fail.
And if it was about being able to bully/beat someone, then I can point Vietnam is way greater nation than USA, because USA lost the war with them.
Vietnam kicked everyone's @ss, including France, and China who you also claim is one of the greatest. So with this argument, you do two things.

1. You concede that US is greater than England AND Russia because US kicked both those @sses (in US Revolutionary War and Cold War).

2. You concede that China can't be the greatest because they got @ss-kicked by Vietnam too.

So by your reasoning Vietnam>US/China>England/Russia :lmao:
 
Not necessarily. If your arbitrarily decided scoring system for nations is wrong, my opinion is more useful than yours.
This is another contradiction. How can you say my system is "arbitrarily decided" and "wrong" when you don't even know what it is is? And how can your "opinion" be useful when you have no opinion?:confused:

AFAICT your argument/agenda seems to be saying that its impossible and pointless to decide which nation is the greatest, EXCEPT that you are sure that it's NOT the US.:lol: How can you be sure if you can't even "decide the performance parameters?"
BTW, my answer is not that it's difficult to rate performance of nations. My answer is that it is impossible without first deciding what performance parameter you are interested in. Current scientific progress? Life expectancy? Equality? Expected manufacture production in next 30 years? These all measure something that can be used to measure different aspects of life and progress but all will result in different score leader. There just isn't simple answer to question "what is the greatest nation in world".
Again, you are just avoiding the issue. All those parameters are great ways to measure. I base my opinion on all those factors and more to reach an "overall greatest nation." But you don't have to do that. You can say who you think is the greatest in each one of those categories you named. So who is it BTW? You just keep giving hypotheticals without reaching any conclusions. Who do you think is the greatest in science, equality, etc?
To me it seems that you are trying to make world much simpler that it really is. Fastest is irrefutable.
No, actually its not... You can bring up factors like wind resistance, atmospheric density, heat, humidity, running surface, performance enhancers, etc... on and on. There is always some factor that you can use to challenge the results. And that is all you are doing here, just pointing out the endless variables... yes, yada, yada... we all know that there are endless variables... it's so cliche that its hardly even worth saying... Really its not worth saying. The point is that you can't/won't make a decision. You just keep repeating over and over that there are endless variables... which is pointless because everyone already knows that. Just make a decision, stop riding the fence. Say what your parameters are and put your conclusion out there. It's almost like you are just so afraid that someone will say you are wrong that you are afraid to actually sate any opinion. C'mon its just a fun discussion. Stop trying to be a referee. We don't need any of those :).
 
Wow, Sommerswerd is babbling a lot, without saying much. You are a lawyer, right?

There is not one thing with what you can measure the greatness of a nation. There are so many things.

- Economy (here the US are not that great currently, richt)
- ecology care: Do the US care at all?
- military: Here the US is superior, but that does not mean much. If they make use of their military power, the whole planet is f***ed. So it's rather meaningless.
- culture: Here the US has some great things to offer in the recent couple of decades, but there are many nations with much more to offer (at least in the past).
- Cars: C'mon, nobody beats Germany here ;)

...and there are more things to think of. Maybe someone has more examples.

And we might start talking about PRISM, which whole Europe is not too excited about. :mischief:

If my HDD dies, I could ask the NSA, whether they can give me a copy of my data...
 
The greatest is not automatically equivalent to the fastest even in track and field. I do not have an practical example as I do not watch much sports but suppose there was an athlete A who during their career won practically all major events but the current record holder is athlete B competing couple of decades later. I'd be more inclined to call athlete A the greatest. And remember human performance in athletic events has been increasing steadily over the time (not sure why, but I think it might have something to do with advancements in equipment and training methods).
It's not just in athletics, its academic, economic, production acheivements as well. Kids learn in elemetary school what I used to learn in high school now. My 1 year old is capable of operating a smartphone. The DOW Jones is 5 times what it was 30 years ago... but again, that's just you stating the variables why you can't decide...again, rather than making a decision and defending it. :)

But anyway on your other point, as I said, you can sometimes distinguish greatest-of-all-time (GOAT) from the "current greatest." For example Lionel Messi is the "current greatest" while Pele is probably the GOAT. So just apply that to nations and give us an opinion;)

My point is that there is no point
:dubious: This statement perfectly exemplifies what I am saying about your argument. I just dont get where you are going with it. It just seems like you are so determined to say that US is not the greatest, and that really is your only goal.

The point is to express an opinion and then defend your opinion in a fun back-and-forth discussion.
Just sorting the nations by life expectancy and claiming Japan is the greatest country in world is just plain silly.
:confused: Who did that? Did I do that? When did I "sort the nations by life expectancy and claim Japan is the greatest country in world"? What are you talking about? Or is this just another strawman hypothetical?;)
I just find the whole concept of "the greatest nation" utterly silly. World is much more complex than a game of Civ. You just can't point out the single greatest nation. And even if you could, I don't see the point in doing that. That's what I'm trying to say.
And yet you keep talking about it... ESPECIALLY taking care to always refute anyone saying that the US is the greatest. What I don't get is if you think this is so silly and pointless then why do you keep trying so hard to argue that the US isn't the greatest.

That is why I am speculating that your claim that you find this pointless and silly to be just a rhetorical tactic. You are opposed to the notion that the US is the greatest nation (like 2metra ;)) but unlike 2metra, you are unwilling/unable to just say who you think is greater... probably because you never thought about it. All you know is that the whole "US #1!!!" thing irritates you and so you are arguing tooth and nail aginst it, but when I ask you "OK then who is the greatest?" you say... "Oh you can't tell that... it's too complicated... too many variables... no way to measure that" :smug:

What:confused:?? You just said US isn't the greatest, so either that was just a typical emotional anti-US knee-jerk "US is the evil empire:evil:" response, or you have some evidence/statistics/measurements etc to back that up?

So if you have evidence to back your opinion, then you are contradicting your premise that you can't measure "greatness"
With the Civ scoring system it would most likely be China
Finally! An opinion! So you think China is the greatest huh? ANYONE but the naughty, bad, nasty ol' US, huh ;)? Now before you retreat into equivocation "Oh I didn't mean to say China was the greatest, I just meant in Civ points... yada yada..." I will say that in modern-day based scenarios, (WWI, WWII, 1861 -[post unification], etc) the US usually outscores China in BTS, so I would opine that you are wrong about the Civ scoring system putting China on top :).
Oh, please! These are two totally different discussions. Cultural victory in real life does not happen. Even if you did have three or more cities with legendary culture it does not prompt a victory screen. This part of the discussion was my attempt to lighten up but then you try to make this also about me trying to bash USA, which is not at all what I've been aiming at.
Me lighten up? I have said over and over that I regard this whole debate as just good fun! No nukes remember;) And no the discussions are not seperate, because drat boy said "US already won cultural victory" in response to you saying that US could achieve "greatness" by "winning a diplomatic victory"
BTW, if I'm willing to grant any Civ victory in the real world for anyone, that'll go for the nation that sends the first space ship towards Alpha Centauri :)
Nice;) Pick a parameter that no one has acheived, or can achieve during our lifetime. Nice dodge Aivo:lol:
 
AFAICT your argument/agenda seems to be saying that its impossible and pointless to decide which nation is the greatest, EXCEPT that you are sure that it's NOT the US.:lol: How can you be sure if you can't even "decide the performance parameters?"
Please, point out where I have stated that specifically USA cannot be the greatest nation in the world. That has never been my point. My point is that no nation should be touted as the greatest ever before defining clearly what "the greatest" actually means. And that in most cases the whole competition is pointless.

I think our way to look at the issue might be is different due to our different educations. I have been trained in engineering sciences and I find ambiguous statements like "greatest nation" just irritating. Many problems in the world can be accounted to bad or misrepresented data.

However, I do believe that people are entitled to their opinions, as long as they don't present them as facts. Now if you were to ask me, which nation I like the best, I could give you a 100% guaranteed subjective answer. But since you want me to name "the greatest nation" I cannot do that before agreeing on what "the greatest" in this context means.

You can say who you think is the greatest in each one of those categories you named. So who is it BTW? You just keep giving hypotheticals without reaching any conclusions. Who do you think is the greatest in science, equality, etc?
Science: This is debatable, but if you ask my opinion I'd say USA.
Equality: Sweden, the last I checked. Take that with a grain of salt as I'm not sure I remember the survey results correctly.
Life expectancy: Japan.
Expected manufacture in next 30 years: Beats me. I'd guess China, but that's just a guess.
So what did this achieve?

If my HDD dies, I could ask the NSA, whether they can give me a copy of my data...
Maybe I should try this out. My SIM card just recently died and I lost much of my cell phone contact info.
 
i like this debate bur we have a situation with the other french civ so beter chexk there and start talking about that.
 
The Principality of Sealand is the greatest nation of the world, for no particular reason.
 
This is a really silly conversation. Obviously "What is the greatest nation" is a completely subjective question. Are you trying to change people's minds, or just giving your own subjective opinion?

My personal subjective opinion is that the world would be a lot better off if people viewed everyone equally without consideration of nationhood or citizenship, and it's way too easy to make that mental leap from "best country" to "best people". Extreme nationalism brings few benefits and a ton of problems. It can be fun to joke about "I'm the best because I belong to this nation" but if you actually and truly believe that, it has potential to lead down a very dark path. Obviously world wars and genocides are the most extreme examples, but I see consequences of this every day working with undocumented women and children.

On a lighter note, I'm pretty sure that China would be ahead in the BTS score count, since we're only considering Population, Land, Wonders and Tech. They're nowhere near winning the game, though, unless they're going for a score victory (the game ends at 2050, right?). Personally (and subjectively), I'd rather live in a country with more freedoms than are currently allowed to the average Chinese citizen.

And you don't win the game when you launch a ship to Alpha Centauri, you win when the ship lands (and your capital hasn't been razed in the meantime :wow:)
 
Why don't we measure the greatest country by how much money the average citizen makes, without taking into account PPP or even exchange rates?

Then Zimbabwe comes out on top. Amirite? Zimbabwe #1!
 
bar discussions are to chance to do something while the the bartender brings other beer...

PS: and uruguay is the greatest nation for far... :gripe:
 
Man, I really have no time to read all and argue/comment as the matter deserves.

I wanted to give special attention to the one where you suggest that I might be communist-USSR oriented because we were in the same block with Russia. Long story short, I lived in the communism and I remember what was back then and I saw how the communists did after the revolution, so no, I am not at all sympathizing with the communists/USSR to be intuitively in favor of USSR vs USA and thats why to have something against USA.

I think medals won in the Olympics is a good category to include in the analysis of who is greatest, especially gold medals.

China wins alot of those BTW.;)

I will drop on this that it is believed that USA wins many Olympic medals, first because it is big country obviously - the chance of birth of extraordinary athlete is higher with more births, then because of all the poverty amongst afro-americans who are much or less given choice to become rap singers, drug dealers or go with all power in professional sport, and not at last place, the advanced sport industry, all the money that are injected ;) in it and the chemical industry which creates new drugs for the USA athletes, which can not be detected yet, or are simply not in the forbidden list yet.


Your example with the Chinese waiters who serve the wealthy USA is not correct too. USA owes China much money. Kinda like 10% of all your money are Chinese property and this will only deepen ;)
 
I will drop on this that it is believed that USA wins many Olympic medals, first because it is big country obviously - the chance of birth of extraordinary athlete is higher with more births,
And here you have contradicted yourself, because you were just talking about how China is greater than the US because of having so many more citizens, but in last Olympics US won over 100 medals and China like 80 something, despite the fact that China has almost FOUR TIMES the population of US. So your argument about population size is proven wrong right there... But lets then talk about India who has the second highest population and THREE TIMES the population of the US. How many medals? SIX!!:lol: What does this say about your argument that more people=more medals??
then because of all the poverty amongst afro-americans who are much or less given choice to become rap singers, drug dealers or go with all power in professional sport,
I hear this all the time... America uses their poor, ignorant, Black slaves to win their medals for them :rolleyes:, but I ask, who is the greatest Olympic Champion of all time? Michael Phelps... and sorry, Michael Phelps is as white as the driven snow... not black at all, not even a little. BTW, who was the greatest Olympic champion before him? Mark Spitz... another (American) white guy. So your argument that blacks win all the medals for USA (and that this somehow makes the medals less legitimate) is just more anti-US propaganda.

Another contradiction in your argument that "blacks are so poor and uneducated that they have no choice but to focus on becoming pro-athletes and win medals for the US" is that India and China are far, far, far poorer than the US ESPECIALLY India. So if lots of poor=lots of good athletes than why India only wins 6 medals? Your argument is disproven.
and not at last place, the advanced sport industry, all the money that are injected ;)
But then you are basically saying that "US is the richest and most powerful nation in the world... Of course they win all the medals because they are the best, they have the most money, the best technology, the best training, the best everything, so they rule, obviously!"... If that is your point, then its hard to argue with that;)
and the chemical industry which creates new drugs for the USA athletes, which can not be detected yet, or are simply not in the forbidden list yet.
So this argument can basically be boiled down to "US always wins, so they must be cheating somehow.:mad: No one can prove it, but I believe it to be so anyway!":lol: "We must figure out what they are doing so we can change the rules and make it illegal!" Why not just change the rules to make it illegal for the US to win?:lol:
Your example with the Chinese waiters who serve the wealthy USA is not correct too. USA owes China much money. Kinda like 10% of all your money are Chinese property and this will only deepen ;)
Well actually it is more like 8% of US debt not US money... and if I owe $100 in debt and I make $100/year and $8 of that is owed to you but I have 10 years to pay, that is $0.80/year. So I don't owe you 8% of my money, I owe you less than 1% of my annual money, but why let facts get in the way of some good anti-US propaganda right;)?

What you fail to mention is that 25% of China's chief export, electronics, is purchased by US. So China depends on US for 25% of her economy, while we only depend on them for 8% of ours.
 
i like this debate bur we have a situation with the other french civ so beter chexk there and start talking about that.

Yeah, we will definitely beat other teams in the # of off-topic posts :lol: - likely in the total number of posts, too. And we are "greatest team" for sure ;) Looks like it is time to focus on beating them in -game, too ;)
 
afro-americans who are much or less given choice to become rap singers, drug dealers or go with all power in professional sport,
Another point about this argument being just flat wrong... Ever heard of Ryan Lochte? McKayla Maroney? Sean Johnson? Nastia Lukin? Shawn White? Apollo Ono? Lindsey Vonn? Missy Franklin?

Black Olympians dominate the US team in the sprint races and in Basketball. That's it really. The US barely sends any black olympians to the Winter games. And with the sprint races, the same can be said of EVERY country that makes it to the medal round. The men's 100m medal race for example is usually between the US, Canada, and several Caribbean islands, all of which send black runners. So pointing out that the US sprinters are black is irrelevant, because in the medal race, all the sprinters are black, regardless of country. Blacks just don't account for the US dominance, sorry. Its a nice propaganda talking point, but it fails in the face of facts.
 
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