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Another nice quote from Paul Graham

September 28th, 2005

“As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a
country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist
People’s Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the
world you’d want to live.” - Paul Graham

(Thanks to James Miller for that one)

Possibly related, but possibly totally unrelated, posts include
 "More from Paul Graham"  "Hackers and Painters"  "What Business Can Learn from Open Source"  "Hackers and Daughters" 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 2:58 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Another nice quote from Paul Graham”

  1. Paul Says:
    September 28th, 2005 at 7:43 pm

    “United States of America”?

    or even

    “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”?

  2. qsf Says:
    September 29th, 2005 at 7:08 am

    Hi Paul!

    Well, it’s not the number of words, it’s the number of prefixes. So where does the name actually start?

    Anyway, I have a feeling you’d rather live somewhere called something simple, like, let’s say, “Scotland”? :-)

    Q

  3. Frank Says:
    September 29th, 2005 at 8:37 am

    Interesting comment, Quentin, but I see no reason why someone from outer space would see the first two words of “Democratic Republic of X” as any different from those of “United Kingdom of Y” in the “qualifiers vs. official name” taxonomy. Funny how perceptions change if we’re involved.

  4. qsf Says:
    September 29th, 2005 at 9:00 am

    Hi Frank -

    Well, I guess he only meant it to be a light-hearted observation!

    And I never said I didn’t think our government was corrupt, too…

    Devolution for England!!

    Q

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