• modulus@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 day ago

    Mmm, China perfidiously stealing the hard-earned talent of Western engineers? I know just the solution! They should build an anti-communist self-defence wall:

    We no longer wanted to stand by passively and see how doctors, engineers, and skilled workers were induced by refined methods unworthy of the dignity of man to give up their secure existence in the GDR and work in West Germany or West Berlin. These and other manipulations cost the GDR annual losses amounting to 3.5 thousand million marks.

    Some fine historical irony. Of course, given the way the university system works in places like the US, there’s not even a good argument that this imposes costs on the public, who trains personnel only for them to leave and benefit some other state.

    Maybe this is what Trump’s wall is for.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      3 hours ago

      trains personnel only for them to leave and benefit some other state.

      The entire country of Canada may feel triggered for the last 30 years at this comment.

      I mean, all the doctors and nerds come back, but it takes a decade. Are you saying we get a border wall too, and Trump is gonna pay for it ?

    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      6 hours ago

      Maybe this is what Trump’s wall is for.

      There is a video of thin Mexican worker slipping between the bars (wall had to be see through for some reason) from one side of the border to the other. Obviously wall is meant to keep fat Americans trapped inside America.

      • modulus@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 hours ago

        At a guess, it’s following older British norms, whereby a billion is what it is in other European languages (a million million) and a thousand million is a thousand million or, more pretentiously, a milliard. You’d have to ask the authors though.