Do you think the balkans are ever going to catch up to the west?

Posted by Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 48 comments

So, right now they are wealthier than us due to many historical circumstances, from having access to the Atlantic and being able to have colonies, experiencing inudstrial revolution earlier and ofcourse not having communism.

Do you think this hap that has been made over centuries can be closed or are we just doomed because of our demographics and a worse starting position?

Like, south Korea went from being on the level of Africa in the 60s to being pretty wealthy in the 2000s, but they had a really young population to help them with that, i fear that we could only pull it off with a large baby boom, or if we get some crazy competent leaders like Singapore did.

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blumonste@reddit

The West soon will have to find itself in a struggle to catch up with the East. China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand etc. Trump's tariff game is a symptom of being left behind.

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Couchfar@reddit

chinas GDP as a percent of the US gap has dropped from 73% to like 61%, china is regressing too you know.

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blumonste@reddit

Thanks to Trump's disruption of global trade.

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Couchfar@reddit

they've had a flat GDP since 2020, if one president can fuck chains GDP like that, they weren't that strong to begin with. im sure if the Chinese can do that to us they would've but they can't.

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Couchfar@reddit

Processing img xq0q72rydewg1...

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Couchfar@reddit

trump wasn't president for 20 years buddy its been a year and the trend goes well before his election win.

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Failed_General@reddit

Trumps tarrifs are a symptom of trump being a lunatic. The golbal financial dominance of the USA is far from being seriously challenged

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blumonste@reddit

Are you thinking in terms of years? This is a process that takes sometimes 50 years, a century. It took the British to lose their dominance a minute. They were super powers before WW1. They are out of the game with the ending of WW2/Suez operation. China is the new super power The current actor is leaving the theater, the new one is in the process of taking the stage. You may live to see it, maybe not but it is happening.

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Failed_General@reddit

irst of all, you mentioned a bunch of countries other than China. With the possible exception of malaisia vietnam they seem as stagnant if not worse than Europe, and even then they don't have the population and geography to seriously challenge a great power role. Regarding china, no denying it has seen a meteoric growth over the last 50 years but I'm not convinced it will continue this positive trajectory. They have absolutely dominated manufacturing and are valid contenders for the top regarding r&d but the current political situation of the country seems problematic. The increasing authoritianism and power of Xi over the country even at the expense of party organs I believe will weaken it long term. Either way he has to deal with a couple of problems with no easy solutions, namely the absolutely insane demographic collapse of china which trends increasingly towards Korean levels, an extremely weak financial sector in the country which the goverment doesn't seem to even want to solve (it would mean giving up some degree of political power), insane levels of public debt obscured through a crazy number of fronts (local governments and state governments mostly), big youth unemployment.

A 5% growth rate while huge swathes of the country remain so vastly underdeveloped is not the achievement that one would think it is, and they barely even meet that.

China is a great power once more, there is no going back on that and similarly america is on the decline, an accelaring one at that according to me under this administration. Having said that the world as I see it will be increasingly multipolar, not Chinese dominated.

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Imaginary_String_814@reddit

doubt it standard of living and qol is still unmatched compared to ur listed nations.

East is still working to live and they face also alot of demograpical problems like the west.

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blumonste@reddit

Visit China, you will change your mind.

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

Their problems are way worse imo.

West has birth rate around 1.4 which js bad, but asian countries fell to around 1.

Ofcourse, South Korea is the worst one of the bunch.

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Couchfar@reddit

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just gonna leave this here.

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Mental-Book4148@reddit

To be honest, no. But we can be close to them. The thing is that our cultures just aren't build for it, nor do we have shit ton of resources to be like the GCC and develop from rock zero to top tear economy. If we are to catch up we would need once in a millennium type leaders to be able to completely change society and how it is run. We haven't had such leaders in any Balkan county as of yet.

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PasicT@reddit

No and I'm honestly fine with that.

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NecessaryDisaster498@reddit

I am gonna be honest: I hope the Balkan does well, but I dont think so. I dont see how the demographic fallout can be countered. In theory, the Balkan could innovate so hard that people would want to come and live on the Balkan, but this aint happening. Add the extra language people would have to learn to even enter and the surrounding nations with much more soft-power and we are going full force into a crash.

The best bet for the Balkan is to form some kind of federal state themselves, if the EU ever falls apart. Otherwise hope the EU is going to keep donating money.

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IllGold3207@reddit

The main problem in balkanic states its corruption and incompetence. That's what I see. Otherwise the people are intelligent. I mean.... All my friends are doctors or engineers. They are not just people like Indians who are working in IT but have 0 creativity to work out of the patterns. One of my friends after working 4 years as an engineer, now it's able to build robots for other factories by himself. Another problem in the Balkan is that people don't support each other. They are rather nice with foreigners than with their own people or relatives

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netslaveone@reddit

Don't worry, can't you see that the west is catching up with the Balkans?

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EphemeralOcean@reddit

If they were discover valuable natural resources and have good governance, yes.

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vasjpan002@reddit

No, resource curse, makes lazy crooks. Work hard. Stop drinking.

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EphemeralOcean@reddit

That's where the good governance part comes in. Norway found oil and that changed the game for them because they had good governance and used their resources wisely. Croatia is becoming a source for LNG, so there is potential there.

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vasjpan002@reddit

Greece conquered Byzantium from within - look at all the EU officials from the Balkans

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super_pasrelle@reddit

We are becoming poorer now, I assume you can’t be that wealthy without world dominance

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

I mean, swiss dont have world dominance and they are wealthy, same for Scandinavian countries and Singapore.

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holyrs90@reddit

Swiss is a bunch of dirty money.

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super_pasrelle@reddit

Swiss is famous for closing it’s eyes on dirty money and Idk much about the nordic country except thzt norway has oil.

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

Denmark for example has 6 million people and is very wealthy, they boast companies like Marsk, Novo Nordisk, Vestas, Lego...

I hope my country that has a similar population can replicate that.

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tinmanjk@reddit

South Korea + Singapore are much smarter and much much more organized people.

I think only way for us to become better than the West is do nothing and wait patiently for them to completely fail as societies and economies.

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alkorisno@reddit

China is on the rise and west is on the fall. Balkans could end up richer then the west, depends how WW3 goes.

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Frank_cat@reddit

Both are deeply troubled societies (S.K & Singapore).
:(

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

Plenthy of smart people in the balkans, problem is that out engineers, scientists and doctors move out a lot more easily than they can do it in Korea

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tinmanjk@reddit

not as smart as Koreans. They should have 5-10 IQ points higher than us.

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alkorisno@reddit

We ware a lot poorer before communism. The west was always richer because of slavery, colonies and genraly more sofisticated systems of exploitation.

We will catch up once we take all of their gold that they hoarded through centurius of exploitation.

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Raphael1987@reddit

I hired this year 4 people who came back from Germany.

gif

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

Ooooo nice, what does your company do if I may ask?

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riquelm@reddit

Yes, if smarter minority in our countries finally figure out how to overthrow kakistocracy that is currently rampaging.

This is so much harder than it seems, stupid people in the Balkans are very confident and sneaky, they are using everything they have in order to continue abusing power, you can see everything clearly on the example of what is happening in Serbia now

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Beautiful-Dish-6275@reddit (OP)

Oh for sure, but id say stupid people everywhere are too confident. I believe its called dunning kruger effect.

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riquelm@reddit

Yeah, but in certain societies, majority of them are being handled by the smarter minority of population, and they are limited in how much damage they can cause to their societies, in the Balkans that is not the case so stupid are flying high and killing us

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ImamTrump@reddit

Arguably some of these Balkan nations are a few revolutions behind. In my experience it’s been more about world outlook and willfulness to progress.

It’s not always about money or investments.

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Up to the Balkans

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