Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

>
> By that standard, Singapore is the most important city in the world,
> with
> Montevideo behind and all other cities lost in the dust.
>
I was talking about the importance of a town *in a country*. For its importance
in the world, you have to take into account the (relative) importance of the
country itself too (taking into account all aspects, whether historical,
social, philosophical, economical, etc...). It may be a difficult notion to
define, but it's necessary if we want to treat countries, and thus people,
really equally.

For instance, I find it nonsense to compare countries' richness with absolute
values. How can you compare a country with 1 billion inhabitants with a country
with 1 million inhabitants? The only true way of comparing countries' wealth is
the richness per inhabitant, a relative notion that really allows to make
meaningful comparisons. And indeed using it you get interesting results (for
instance, the US are economically strong only because they are the biggest
First World country. When we look at the wealth per inhabitant, they go back to
the 15th position or so - making it a very poor country in the First World -,
the first one of all being Luxemburg - OK, a bit small :)) - and the 4th one
being the Netherlands - I don't remember the actual figures, but they date from
the year 2000 -).

It's just to say that you have to relativise *everything*, if you want to be
able to compare things. And when you do, you realise that yes, Marseille and
Chicago are comparable for instance.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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