He's referring to the fact that in the 70's and 80's everyone thought Japan was going to dominate but their economy wasn't (and still isn't) built on the most solid foundation. The Japanese were buying everything on debt, include Pebble Beach, but they didn't have much backing up those payments.
China has a ton of hidden debt that's masked by the government. No one knows how much is there. When added to their cultural and demographic problems I doubt we are seeing China's ascendancy.
Have you thought about placing it on third party gaming sites? Kongregate.com is a great example (disclaimer I work there), they have a built in audience, handle marketing, payments, customer support, etc so you can focus on development. Solo game development, even in small teams, can be quite the struggle and there are communities that are happy to help.
From experience spending extremely large amounts of money: If done right Facebook will win every time. Use targeted mobile app install campaigns, Facebook's bread-and-butter.
Your main problem is going to be that the game is sci-fi themed. They are very hard to marketing. If any perspective developers are reading this, don't make sci-fi themed mobile games.
After I figured out OkCupid I had about a 30%-40% message to date success rate. I've shown friends and while they haven't had quite my success they've drastically increased the number of responses they receive. The key is to keep it simple, 3-4 sentences. First is a funny line about something in her profile to grab her attention, next comment on something shared, finally a funny open ended question. One or two messages later ask her out for drinks.
Don't just say "hi" or write a book, that just doesn't work.
Now I've been off the market for a couple years so things might have changed but more than likely they haven't.
People seem to forget that democracy and freedom are relatively new to the world. The Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago, many European countries have been free for less than 40 years. Don't take freedom for granted, it's not the steady state system, tyranny is.
I'm sorry to say but a lot of countries will degrade back to authoritarianism within the next 10-20 years due to economy and political problems.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
China is an oligarchy or crony capitalist country. The wealthy and powerful use the government to get what they want. In a true free-market system you can't use the government to destroy the competition and make yourself money. This is the problem with the US today, we've given so much power to the central government that we've created a drastically distorted market.
Texas is just plain run well. The state barely had a recession because they had common sense regulations that stop the housing from skyrocketing in the first place. It takes days not months or years to get building permits. Texas is a perfect example of how the country should be run as a whole.
Paul addresses two points. First that corporations and the rich avoid taxes and two that there isn't enough money to fund the public good. The solution to both is very simple.
First, completely scrap our current tax code. Start over from scratch. To avoid cheating make it insanely simple so their aren't any loopholes. Everyone and every company pays X% of their net income. No deductions. No anything.
Second, government has plenty of money. It's just gotten so inefficient due to bureaucracy that it can't do anything. The best story was a road that got washed away, government came in and said it was going to takes years to repair and cost over a million dollars. The town final got fed up and did it themselves. In a weekend.
Another great example is the school system. Bureaucracy, administrators, and union work rules have exploded the costs. The number of teachers has stayed stagnate while I believe administrators have quadrupled.
The United States is the most charitable country in the world. On top of that I never said to deny coverage to those that can't afford it. There are other ways. How about the giving them an annual voucher for $X, whatever they don't spend gets rolled over into the next year. Just like a HSA.
You can still sue a doctor or hospital for malpractice.
EDIT (answering the responses):
- Overseas you can buy a cheap insurance policy to cover the cost of a lawsuit. The underwriter determines your likelihood of success and charges accordingly.
- You really think regulations stop that from happening now? People still get the wrong limbs operated on and amputated.
Where does it work well? A small country with a homogenous population can pull it off but there isn't a single large country where it works. They keep their costs down by rationing coverage with wait-lists. I know a few people from the UK where their family members lived in daily pain and had to wait YEARS for their number to be called. They also limit the availability to the best medications and procedures to keep costs down. Also the quality is also quite poor, hundreds of people in the UK have died of dehydration in the hospital because the staff forgot to give them water.
How is this surprising? We've completely taken the free-market out of health care. The only way it will ever be solve is if we re-introduce market forces back into the mix. The other problem is all the government regulations that tie the hands of people that would do the innovating. That's one of the big reasons California is at the extreme. They continually add requirements to medical insurance that increase the cost. The solution is simple, let the free-market, ie us, decide what we want.
Sweden and Canada are the best two examples where austerity worked. Need to realize that there is no austerity in Europe, every economy is still spending more than they were just 5 years ago.
You do realize that if the current global temperature trends continue for another 2 years every global warming model will fall outside the 95% confidence interval (ie, wrong).
Can't recall the study but a researchers analyzed optimal work behavior. They found that the most/best work is produced when an individual works 7-9 hours per day. The more creative the task (ie coding) the more skewed the optimal time is towards 7 hours/per day. You also want to break the day into 2-3 segments with breaks in-between.
Got a couple emails asking me questions, this is the company I always used in the US for prototyping. They are a little expensive but fast. They also have great resources that will answer all your questions:
China has a ton of hidden debt that's masked by the government. No one knows how much is there. When added to their cultural and demographic problems I doubt we are seeing China's ascendancy.