Chapter 535 It’s Difficult

Barron has also studied these things - the think tank he funded would issue him a detailed report on the industrial structure of Britain every year.

As Barron held a high position in Britain and understood the situation in Britain more and more, he realized more deeply that Britain's future was destined to be difficult to return to the position of global hegemony, and even it was extremely difficult to continue to maintain its current position.

Speaking of which, Barron is not only the Duke of Britain now, but also his industrial base is in Britain. Even for the safety and inheritance of his own wealth, if possible, he will try to make Britain stronger - so that he can gain benefits by controlling a certain amount of British power.

But in reality, this is too difficult, and at most it can only be improved to a certain extent.

In fact, not only Britain, but also Western capital including Europe and the United States will face major challenges in the future, and they are increasingly unable to cope with them.

This is the conclusion drawn by Barron based on his understanding of the political, economic and industrial production conditions of these countries, plus some future developments in his previous life.

It can be said that since Mrs. Thatcher's economic privatization reform, Britain has completely lost the possibility of competing with the world's top group of powers.

Why? It is precisely because of the free market reform at that time that almost all British state-owned enterprises have become private enterprises until now.

How can the owners of private enterprises care about the fact that industry is the foundation of the country? They only pursue profits and need to get more income.

If it is combined with the electoral system of Western countries such as Britain, then for enterprises, they can obtain development with very few constraints, but for the country, it has almost lost all its future - it may be too pessimistic to say this, but at least it has lost the possibility of becoming an industrial power.

This needs to be viewed from two aspects. For private enterprises, profit is the most important - if you can make money more easily through finance or foreign investment, who would go to work hard in manufacturing?

Even for industrial manufacturing such as automobiles, electrical equipment, and daily necessities, you can choose to open factories in Asia, South America and other regions with lower labor costs. Who would open a factory in a place like Britain where labor costs are so high?

In the end, only the financial industry, tourism and other service industries and high-tech and high-profit manufacturing industries can be left in the UK.

As for the guiding role of the government?

This is the most fatal flaw of the so-called democratic electoral system, which is the parliamentary election every five years, which makes each government only able to see the results within five years or even three years - they only pursue short-term interests and cannot make longer-term plans.

Because many long-term plans may even cause economic stagnation or decline in the short term, and only after breaking through a certain limit will it enter a fast lane of growth.

But every five-year government of the British government needs to clean up the mess of the previous government in the first two years - after all, to win, it must be that the previous government did many things unsatisfactory or caused a crisis - and then there are only three years left in office. For the next election, will you choose a quick and profitable policy that can be effective in the short term, or a policy that takes five or ten years to be reflected but is very beneficial to the long-term development of the country?

Under this system that caters to voters, it is doomed to fail to guarantee the continuity of policies, and it can only be quick to achieve success and instant benefits in the end...

If this is the case, then even if you maintain high-tech manufacturing and financial industries, you can still make good profits and maintain the welfare of the people...

Yes, but the premise is that you need to maintain your technological advantages and always have barriers in high-tech manufacturing.

But other countries are developing rapidly, climbing up one industrial pearl after another, and lowering their prices to compress profits!

Why did the European and American West fear the Soviet Union at the beginning? It was not just because of the social system, nor was it just because of the so-called "democracy" - you must know that the word democracy originated from the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union had institutional advantages over the West at that time.

For the West, the most terrifying thing about the Soviet Union was not the above, nor their army, but the long-term plan that lasted for five to ten years, which could ensure that they concentrated their efforts to break through one technical difficulty after another. How could people feel at ease with this constant, continuous, being chased and breaking their technological barriers as a normal feeling?

Every time a technological barrier is broken, it means that the high profits of an industry are buried, and several small "developed countries" may be brought down to earth...

Faced with such a behemoth, they can only hope that the other party will make mistakes.

Fortunately, the Soviet Union did make mistakes and eventually disintegrated.

But can they continue to be so lucky?

"We can't just put our hopes on the other party making mistakes, even if we still have the advantage in terms of media and comprehensive strength..."

Barron once said to the Crown Prince and Brown:

"Any country can make mistakes, including the United States, so we also need to ensure that we can stand on the other side when necessary - we need to keep any possibility."

No one knows his former homeland better than Barron. It is not as aggressive as the West. It just wants to do business - in fact, their wish has long been written on the Tiananmen Gate Tower "Long live the great unity of the people of the world"...

As for British industrial manufacturing...

Barron can only guarantee more investment in high-end manufacturing with sufficient profits in Britain.

On the other hand, it is the London Technology City he promoted. Barron hopes that in the field of the Internet, at least Britain can keep up with the pace of the United States and China.

Not to say that they can be compared, but at least in some future directions, such as cloud computing and AI, they can drive Europe not to lag behind too much.

Of course, this is indeed difficult, because Internet products are not like other industries, such as manufacturing, where you need to manufacture at least the corresponding number of products based on how many customers you want. But Internet products are different. For example, after you develop a game or a software, how many users you have depends on how wide a range of user groups you can market these games and software to...

The reason why the United States and China are the most powerful in the Internet industry in the future is mainly because they have the largest market - the United States has a global market dominated by English, while China has a sufficiently broad Chinese market...

As for Europe, to put it bluntly, Internet products occupying the European market do not even have more room for development than going to the American market - after all, although the value of European users is also relatively high, in this continent with an area similar to that of China and the United States, in addition to English, there are also French, German, Italian, Spanish... This is a very diverse multi-language market.

But the problem is that in the American market, it is really not that easy to compete with Silicon Valley. The current London Science City can only do its best to have an advantage in the British market first, and then seek the European market.