The Language Paradox

 There is a phenomenon that is known as "The Resource Curse" or, "The Paradox Of Plenty" There is an article about it on http://www.wikipedia.org/ . This refers to the likelihood that average people in a country that is rich in natural resources are actually worse off than those in a country without such resources.

The reason for this contradiction is human nature. Riches breed corruption and there will likely be people who seek to get the wealth from the natural resources for themselves. Such riches also mean that they may be used by an unpopular government to try to keep itself in power. If a country can get by on income from resources, it may negelect proper development of education and industry.

Today, I would like to ad a similar paradox that I have observed. This paradox involves the language that is spoken in a country. At first glance, it would seem that any country would be better off if it used a language that was widely spoken in the outside world. But surprisingly, this is often not the case.

My economic philosophy is that there is no real substitute for actually making things, in other words manufacturing. But this is also a difficult economic route. It is easier to build an economy based on trade or finance. However, this is never as stable as an economy based primarily on manufacturing. For details, you can review "The Production Tier" on the world and economics blog, http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ .

Let's consider the English language. It would seem to be a tremendous advantage for a country to speak English so as to make it easier to trade with other countries. But that is the problem, it makes it too easy. Britain, the land where the Industrial Revolution began, now has an economy based more on finance than anything. This is made possible by it having spread it's language across the globe.

If there was one thing that I could change about the economy of my native Britain, it would be that it would go back to manufacturing. An economy based on moving paper and electrons around can never be as stable as one that actually makes things that are needed and will sell. There is still a significant level of manufacturing in English-speaking North America, but that is mainly because of distance to other manufacturing sources overseas.

India speaks English and that has made it possible for the country to become the knowledge center for the world that it is now. Everything from computer programming to tech support to customer service can be done over the wires from India at much more economical prices. Legions of English-speaking doctors are making India also a center for medical treatment for western countries. It is less expensive to fly to India to have an operation than to have it at home.

China has no such advantage. Relatively few people speak one of the major dialects of Chinese, who are not Chinese. This left the country little choice except to turn to manufacturing, and it has ended up better off than it would have been otherwise. The same pattern applies to Japan.

Basically, developed countries which do not speak a widespread language are forced to turn to manufacturing because the language barrier makes it more difficult to build an economy based on trade or finance. This is the more difficult route, but the country usually ends up better off in the long-term. Probably the four best examples of this are Germany, China, Japan and, South Korea.

A national economy based on natural resources is vulnerable to commodity price swings. Tourism is an excellent source of income, except that it is so fickle. Greece has one of the most difficult of languages, and might have been in this category also. But it also has an abundance of sun and history that was relied upon as a source of income. The European countries that are in the most economic trouble now are the ones that were most dependent on tourism. The Netherlands would also seem a candidate for the language-manufacturing economic route, and this has become true to a great extent, but the Dutch early became skilled in global trade as well.