The author's key argument is that extractive institutions lead to state failure. Like most theories of state failure, there's some good examples but enough weak or counter examples to discredit it as 'the' answer. At best, I'd argue that extractive institutions are a block to success: countries with them have one fewer barrier to overcome.
I recently researched the thorny issue of what consititutes art, and the leading idea in that field is a cluster theory: a set of ten ideas which commonly associated with things accepted as art. Some objects don't have all ten, but together they provide a powerful guide. My point in mentioning this is that state failure seems to follow the same pattern. Geography (ie Jared Diamond's theory) is a factor in state success and failure. Culture is another factor. Economic system and the nature of institutions (extractive or inclusive) are two more factors. (And there's bound to be a few more).
A state can succeed with only a couple of these. Lacking them all is a sure sign of failure. Having them all likely comes as close to guaranteeing success as possible. But thinking there's some single indicator that determines state failure is a doomed project.
There is a general dislike for monolithic theories in the social sciences and humanities for a reason: they tend to be reductionist, and this theory seems to be no exception.
And in regards to parameters (a "cluster" of factors) that can be indicative of a failed state:
Looking at the submission's chosen title here, I would at least have expected some sort of connection to the actual idea of failed states[1], which are yearly ranked by a combination of multiple influences, where institutional organisation is a factor alongside others.
While I am sure there are a number of reasons that lead to states success or failure, I am not sure we can determine them because we don't have much data. There are about 200 sovereign states so if you should use less than log_2(200) ~ 8 criteria if you want your theory to make sense.
You can try to use history to add some data, but on the other hand, many smallish states will have similar criteria (history, culture, geography,...) so that diminishes you data set.
In addition, while you could try to use this to make predictions, the time scale is so big that I don't think the whole endeavor is very useful.
Hi zipdog, when such an article is published, it should (if you're doing real work/research in this area) be interpreted as X is one of hypothesized significant causes of Y. X is often a new finding, or an old hypothesis with new support, or with new relevance. There's little reason to think the author meant it literally, given the extensive literature (just search any journal) on how and why states fail, and it is both sensible and charitable to assume the authors at The Economist are well-educated and do their background research (:
In fact, you'll find that this is a popular style in economics and business articles.
> I recently researched the thorny issue of what consititutes art, and the leading idea in that field is a cluster theory: a set of ten ideas which commonly associated with things accepted as art.
Fascinating. Can you post some links about this?
It was eye-opening for me to find out about research into multiple kinds of intelligence. I think I'd like to know more about what you found out about art.
I often wonder about these types of theories. They are often hard to prove or disprove. It is fun to try and come up with a theory that is equally as plausible given the information provided.
To your theory on art, could art be defined as anything which a group of people would define as art? Or potentially anything valued by a group seemly without functional value? It seems to be a balance between simplicity and informational content.
Acceptance by the art community is a key factor, possibly the most important. Other factors include artistic intention, aesthetic qualities, and being considered based on what is already considered art.
These hard to prove theories, such as Jared Diamond's and in the reviewed book, exist in large part to counter the highly convincing and data driven eugenic theories. The eugenic and IQ based theories are politically unacceptable. "A Farewell to Alms" and "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" lay out very convincing and heavily researched cases that explain different national economies very well. The explanations are just not PC.
Realistically, art is whatever the art community considers art, either at the time or after the fact. That's why John Cage can be an artist for being quiet whereas I'm just being quiet.
It doesn't necessarily have to exist for its own sake. Plenty of furniture is considered art, and is exhibited by art museums, but that furniture was designed to be used.
If you mean, was _primarily_ designed to be used, then I don't think that is necessarily the case. For example, certain pieces of furniture are sometimes designed by an architect to complement their overall design. Of course, they want the furniture to be used just as they want the building to be used, but for many I think the art comes first.
Joseph A. Tainter's The Collapse Of Complex Societies is a bit academic but very good study of civilizational collapse. It has a lot of data, studies many different civilizations and examines all popular theories of civilizational collapse. It points to diminshing marginal returns on increasing complexity in civilizations as the mechanism of collapse.
It's far better than the trendy Jared Diamond writing. IMHO, Jared Diamond's collapse is a book written from end to beginning, much like Guns, Germs and Steel to simply reconfirm existing left of center ideas by torturing and cherry picking the data to ignore anything that doesn't reconfirm accepted and popular political narratives.
Really? I found _Collapse_ to be much more boring than I expected. One of the major reasons he claims that a society collapses is a lack of trading partners. Not very sexy at all, and not leftist.
It's neither. The parent comment implied that Diamond's book was a leftist polemic on how the environment is important. I didn't think it was very leftist or very alarmist. That's all I meant. I was actually disappointed when Diamond mentioned neighboring nations as a reason for collapse...how utterly unsurprising and dull. He spent a lot of time talking about it, too.
I just read some of the reviews on Amazon and ended up adding Tainter's book to my reading list. This increasing complexity sounds eerily similar to our current situation.
I am always wary of these grand theories people come up with about why great civilisations fall. People tend to project their own values onto history. Conservatives invariably argue that societies fall because they become decadent and valueless, while liberals contend that societies became too stagnant and inflexible to survive. Observer bias is a big problem in the study of history.
Note that this is a review by the (economically conservative) Economist.
I haven't read Why Nations Fail, but I do read their blog[1] and my interpretation of their theories is much less absolute than the Economist's is - or rather, I think the emphasis is more on the problems of Extractive institutions (which may well be state institutions, but also could be private institutions or hybrids or the two).
For example, even in the review the Economist highlights the example of Botswana which is a good example of state power as a good.
They actually believe in a certain size of government. For example for some developing countries they often suggest increasing tax revenues to build a bigger state.
It seems like "discouraging or prohibiting work" is the common theme, among both these and extractive institutions. Which may be too tautological to be useful: in cases where work isn't worth doing or is outright prohibited, less work/science/innovation gets done.
The author's main point seems to be that corrupt governments allow too much money in too few hands.
Maybe this isn't the grand theory to support them all, but it reminds me a lot of why cancer is so destructive. One part of a large community using far too many resources. There could be a cluster theory to support the causes of cancer as well, but cluster theories are very hard to find solutions for. We don't just need to casually understand the problem. We need to prevent it if possible.
At least this theory gives us a reasonable means of experimenting with and analyzing future failures.
No it isn't. The author's main point is that corrupt governments siphon wealth into privileged hands at the expense of the public good. This isn't same as "allowing" wealth inequality. You can try to elide these things into being the same, but now you're misrepresenting things to make a politically charged point.
If you're going to say I'm wrong, at least point out how I'm wrong. There isn't a big difference between what I said and:
>>corrupt governments siphon wealth into privileged hands at the expense of the public good.<<
The effect is the same. Too much money in too few hands. Countries don't only need the rule of law to protect us from violence. We also need it to protect us from semi-legal forms of theft.
Monarchs gathered wealth and provided protection, and they've been going out of business for quite a while now. Mexico has the richest person in the world along with a lot of corruption and lots of very poor people. How can a place be viable enough to support multibillionaires, and still have people living in shacks?
The difference, near as I can tell (since I'm talking about what two other people are saying and thus quite likely could be misreading either or both of you) is the method by which this wealth concentration occurs.
To use extreme examples, in one case, the concentration comes from enslaving a populace, while in the other case the concentration could come from a pure free market where only contracts are enforced (and thus some people become extraordinarily wealthy by benefiting large numbers of people, as Steve Jobs & Bill Gates have.)
The difference is based on how people perceive the inequality. If it is seen as being unfairly earned, it severely hurts the incentive to work (through, say, paying lower taxes than poorer people, being awarded business through lobbying or social classes, being born into wealth, exploiting or underpaying the working class, or more generally anything where random Person On The Street couldn't do the same thing).
It doesn't matter what the outcome is, as long as it is seen to be fair. As soon as it isn't, people will resent the system, subvert it or rebel. This is a trait we share with monkeys and elephants, and is possibly the basis of social organization.
"Amid weak and accommodating institutions, there is little to discourage a leader from looting. Such environments channel society’s output towards a parasitic elite, discouraging investment and innovation"
A good read is the book "The Mystery of Capital" by Hernando DeSoto. It doesn't address failed states, but talks about why capitalism succeeds in some countries and not in others.
This sounds like game theory, the best solution in this case seems to be when everybody is better off (inclusive), instead of just trying to achieve individual gain (extractive).
I can't get past how needlessly wordy this article is. It's as if someone is trying to flaunt their language skills and it distracts me from the actual content; I must admit that I read the whole thing and did not catch wind of the author's point.
Sentences like these just read as nonsense to me:
"The intuition behind the theory is nonetheless compelling, which makes the scarcity of policy prescriptions frustrating."
That sentence is perfectly clear to me, and English is not my first language. I don't even perceive the style as pretentious or "wordy": it seems the appropriate register for a magazine like the Economist.
it seems the appropriate register for a magazine like the Economist.
I guess that may be true, but why should it be that way? It could have been restated as 'the theory's good, I had expected more predictions'.
The Economist has a highly focused strategy on appealing to particular demographics - high language comprehension skills help position it in the high-value part of the market. It's obviously working, last time i checked it was making huge market share gains and profitability precisely because it was focusing on 5% of the world's richest people, not the local or bulk.
I read it every week and it is very well written. don't confuse that with believing what it says - in today's lingo, it's definitely a 1%er...
People who don't like big words work to continually reassure themselves they're missing no precision of meaning or accuracy of tone. They often are. The selection has a grade level of 15.73 (aka, Junior in college)
Doesn't mean everything should be expressed at the college reading level, but it doesn't mean everything else should be expressed at the reading level of a 6th grader.
To move this sentence down to the flesch reading level of a 6th grader requires the following:
>The intuition behind the theory is nonetheless compelling, which makes the scarcity of policy prescriptions frustrating
to
>Acemoglu's idea make sense to me. I'm still mad and unsettled that it does not tell the government what to do to fix the problem.
FK Grade level of 5.8
And it had to go into the 1st person to do so, Try to write the sentence, capturing all the nuance of what he's saying and keeping it in the third person. Requires several more lines.
It could not, because the theory as presented in the book is flawed (according to the reviewer). One could restate the ideas more simply, but to do so accurately would require many more words.
The Economist is a specific publication that has the whole of the English language available to its authors, rather than just the portions introduced before 8th grade. USA Today exists for the other markets.
Complex vocabulary has the opportunity to convey nuance and heterogeneity that simplistic vocabulary glosses over. It is one of the features of the paper, along with occasionally admitting they are wrong and usually providing rational explanations for the positions they take. I also don't agree with them, but have read the paper for over two decades and it has never induced the blind rage the stupidity and sloppy thinking of network news always seems to manage in the first few minutes.
Many discussions could be more productive if other people emulated their philosophy.
That doesn't express the same thoughts at all though.
I guess what it comes down to is that some people perhaps see it as pompous to place the precise expression of one's thoughts above the simple and efficient conveyance of information.
To these people, I say: read more poetry.
To find true opacity-for-its-own-sake one must look to the french postmodern "philosophers" of the 1960s:
We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.
I don't understand. This kind of sentences is routine in New York Times. If anything, I find the conversational tone inappropriate for such a weighty subject. I do agree that the author tried too hard to write to a broader audience on a complicated subject. The result is too much ink for too little info.
It was not the best-written Economist article I have read, but I didn't find it that bad. I don't really have a problem with the sentence you quoted either.
I got the same feeling and was reminded of this essay by G. Orwell. http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.htm.... The wordiness adds pomp and circumstance to the article, which I guess the authors take to mean that it makes it sound authoritative.
I can't seem to find a way to reply to this comment without setting the flame-thrower to 10, which goes against the 'say it to your face' principle. I guess I can say that I find it very sad that a sentence like that causes any difficulty to a native speaker of English.
I've just disagreed with the authors about Botswana and the French Revolution. Nonetheless, they are wise and understand why nations fail. People suffer when nations fail. What should people do differently to avoid their nations failing? Since the authors had described the problems so well, I hoped that they would offer advice, for I felt sure that it would also be good. They give very little advice. I found that frustrating.
There is a lot of meaning packed into that sentence (read in context). It is brief, not wordy. Unpacking the sentence to make its meaning plain for all to read is self-defeating because it requires too many words. That surfeit of words, if sustained for the length of a book review, re-hides the meaning.
There is fundamentally sound economics behind the authors theory, but there's also really easy to understand logic: IF you have a strong state that controls the economy, then everything that is done must be authorized by the state. This is necessary if the purpose of the state is to extract the nations wealth to profit an elite few. If you have a weak state, then experiments can be tried, and while many experiments will be failures (such as most companies can fail) the ones that are successful really have a lasting and long term positive impact across the whole society. DEC, Apollo and many others failed, but IBM, Apple and Microsoft succeeded.
The other reason this works is that businesses have to accommodate the needs and desires of their customers, their shareholders and their employees. Businesses need all three in order to thrive. Governments don't need to accommodate anyone's desires or needs, short of that which would cause a revolution that overthrows the government... government imposes its edicts using violence while businesses can only attempt to pursuade or entice people.
Naturally this means that government is less interested in accepting economic reality, while businesses have to react very quickly... and if they don't, the entire economy of businesses overall will react quickly (e.g.: your business will get supplanted by one that accommodates the new reality.)
The lesson here for those who wish to enslave a populace and extract wealth from them is rather than have an overarching government with extreme control, allow a great deal of liberty and then impose a %10 tax on it. %10 is better than %50 when its %10 of an economy 1,000 times bigger.
Unfortunately, all states I'm aware of historically, no matter how rooted in liberty, eventually become parasitical and over the years start to extract more and more of the wealth to profit politicians and more and more controlling to make protect that extractive policy.
There are several problem with your theory. Most importantly those in power don't know how long they will stay in power. Dictators don't last that long on average and if you assume there is a 50/50 shot your going to last 10 years investing in the economy may not actually benefit you. Secondly taxes are just one of many ways that the connected extract resources from society, often favors or bribes are an easier target for those with some but not total power.
Finally, the state's real power has little to do with direct force. Functional society's run on softer forms of coercion. Such as propaganda, tribal allegiance, religion, or even entertainment. Consider, over 10 million people live and work in america without permission from the government to do so. And even those with citizenship the largest crop in many states is marijuana and such income rarely makes in on the old tax forms.
> government imposes its edicts using violence while businesses can only attempt to pursuade or entice people.
This is only true where a strong state exists to enforce monopoly of violence. Businesses are perfectly capable of imposing edicts by violence where there is none.
Not really disagreeing with you, but I think it is important to remember that these governments or companies are comprised of individuals following their individual incentives. Those incentives cover a huge range of things beyond simple financial gain.
So while 10% of something 1000 times bigger is definitely better than 50% of the base, that isn't really the issue. It is not as though in an extractive government the loot is divided at the end of the year according to rank or something. It's a bit more catch-as-catch-can.
Basically, and I guess this is what the book is arguing, in the absence of the kinds of institutions that enforce or engender inclusive policies and practices, people do whatever they can get away with.
While the Republicans gripe about "high taxes", it doesn't explain the success of the Nordic countries with their high taxes _and_ high standard of living.
It surely doesn't explain differences between similarly coloured countries.
In Europe Italy seems to be the bluest and yet things are not good.
Ireland is very pale yet it fared pretty well before the recession.
I would argue that in many cases wealth causes IQ and poverty takes it away.
E.g. ex-ussr is rather blue for its sorry state, and I guess it would be much bluer if measured 25 years ago.
Argentina is pretty blue but yet it fails to monetize that.
Mongolia is very blue and it's effectively a placeholder.
Wow, this thread just became some kind of magnet for racists, didn't it. Since you are apparently very proud of your IQ, perhaps you can read the actual article and try to comment on something related to the article's substance, and not just give us a knee jerk reaction based on the title.
The implicit comment is that the article's substance is of no conceivable relevance, because it fails to mention the most obvious possible cause - human genetic diversity - for the pattern it purports to analyze. It's one thing to refute or qualify the null hypothesis. It's another to ignore it.
Why shouldn't it be the null hypothesis that genetic diversity is the cause of global inequality? Human beings have been thinking about this subject for a lot more than the last 50 years, you know. All I think is what more or less everyone used to think - since when Jesus was a little boy. If that's not a null hypothesis, what is?
So, from my perspective, the OP is like a long, vague explanation of how stress causes ulcers or marsh miasmas cause malaria. It's impossible for any such analysis to be any more cogent than any other - all are equally wrong.
The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess.
The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And once you start acknowledging differences, you have to acknowledge that those differences are going to give rise to advantages and disadvantages to things so random that they might not ever matter. But sometimes they do.
Are these differences, this genetic diversity, the root cause of global inequality? Based on my understanding of economics, I don't believe so. But that doesn't mean the conversation should be off the table.
Keeping the conversation off the table removes oxygen in which racists with less noble goals thrive. Human nature being what it is, they make judgements based on first appearances. When people are highly invested in having opinions on people based on things that come from first appearances, they are very likely to mistreat people on an individual basis - i.e. prejudge them, literally, and unfairly, because individual variance is far greater than group variance.
So in the overall scale of things, I think it's better not to have those discussions. The costs are too high, and frankly, history has shown that the public can't be trusted with authoritative opinions that can give cover to heinous acts. The conversation should be off the table.
Thanks for your explanation. I disagree with your conclusion, but now better understand your reasoning. I'm more of the theory that rather than avoiding this conversation, we should confront it head-on: so long as it's accurate, prejudice can be beneficial, but should never trump individual reality. Instead of arguing against all bias because bias is bad, we should argue against false bias because it's false and misleading.
I don't think he's saying all bias is bad. But bias finds support too easily, even when it's not accurate (prejudice, nationalism, etc). And that reasoning is easily repeated by uninformed people which just adds more noise to an already complex discussion.
When you're trying to have a rational discussion about which factors contribute to certain effects, it's better to exhaust all possible theories before attempting to prove that "some people are just better than others."
I guess I'm more in favor of putting all the theories on the table rather than deciding in advance which ones are permissible to hold. Let the false ones fall out because they are false, not because they cannot be discussed. What I deny is that there are true ideas so unpalatable that they must be taboo. I think this is what Barrkel is suggesting is necessary in the case of race.
Wow - I've literally never heard anyone be this frank before. I disagree with the position but I upvote the candor.
I wonder, though, how you feel about all the violence we've seen committed in the name of egalitarianism, in the lives of those now living? For instance:
Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night, and engineered an efficient system in which the prisoners were individually led to a small antechamber—which had been painted red and was known as the "Leninist room"—for a brief and cursory positive identification, before being handcuffed and led into the execution room next door. The room was specially designed with padded walls for soundproofing, a sloping concrete floor with a drain and hose, and a log wall for the prisoners to stand against. Blokhin—outfitted in a leather butcher's apron, cap, and shoulder-length gloves to protect his uniform—then, with no procurator present and no reading of the sentence or any other formalities, pushed the prisoner against the log wall and shot him once in the base of the skull with a German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol. He had brought a briefcase full of his own Walther pistols, since he did not trust the reliability of the standard-issue Soviet TT-30 for the frequent, heavy use he intended.
If we're going to excommunicate 20th-century philosophies on the grounds of their association with this sort of thing, we find quite quickly that we have to excommunicate everyone - right and left, fascist and communist, nationalist and universalist, racist and egalitarian. And then what's left?
I think my position is obvious, and naturally believe that the majority of right-thinking people have come to the same conclusion.
But the rest of your comment makes very little sense to me. Blokhin seems to have been an instrument of state power. I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality.
I also haven't "excommunicated" philosophies on the grounds of association. Rather, I have explained a rationale for a taboo around discussion of certain topics. If "association" with the reprehensible is sufficient grounds for "excommunication", a random walk through Wikipedia should be sufficient to convince oneself that one can trivially "excomunnicate" everything; reductio ad absurdum, hence mere association is not enough.
I certainly can't interpret your post in any other way. (Although I can't interpret "pragmatic principle" in any way at all - it makes me think of jumbo shrimp.)
So essentially, you see a necessary and causal relationship between fascist ideology and fascist terror, but you don't see a necessary and causal relationship between communist ideology and communist terror. Or to use the Russian color codes, you see a relationship between White Terror and White ideology, but not between Red Terror and Red ideology.
Perhaps you won't take my word for it, but you don't need to - the truth isn't hard to find. I can guarantee you 100% that almost everyone involved with both these systems of terror was completely drenched in, convinced by, and in thrall to the ideologies they served.
General Blokhin, for example, single-handedly murdered a substantial percentage of the Polish aristocracy. As he is doing so, is his mind a blank? Or does he conceive himself as freeing the Polish workers and peasants from the grip of the alien, rapacious hereditary nobles? What do you think? With every bullet in the back of some stuck-up count's neck, he's bringing Poland closer to equality.
You'll no doubt agree on the ideological nature of Nazi crimes. The "ordinary men" of Reserve Police Battalion 101 are in exactly the same boat - in their minds, as they slaughter the Jews of Poland, they think: the Jews caused this war, we are freeing Germany from Jewish oppression.
Likewise, as American airmen incinerate hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians, they are thinking: the Huns and the Japs caused this war, now they're paying the price.
We cannot know the mind of any of these individuals. However, the collective propaganda mind of World War II is very easy to recall - all we have to do is read the texts. There is no shortage of American and Soviet propaganda that, read in context, is just as horrifying as anything Goebbels produced. Do you want to hear FDR sneering, raving, and lying like something out of Hitler's Greatest Hits?
> But you do see a relationship between racist/nationalist/fascist ideology and racist/nationalist/fascist executioners, right?
No. I see systems of power-hungry humans manipulating other humans by whatever means they can to achieve their ends. Propaganda and ideologies are usually just vectors - potent vectors - for the transmission of instrumental power. Humans, in the large, are like packs of rabid dogs; it takes very careful social and institutional design to balance force against force and prevent single individuals gaining too much power. I believe the emergence of a dictator, along with the mass murder of opponents, as a natural outcome for a large population starting out otherwise unorganized.
Words like communist, fascist, capitalist, are useful shorthands for communication, but they are labels, and as labels they risk short-circuiting thought. Some thing A is labeled as X, some thing B is labeled as X, and you naturally start to think that A and B have some connection.
When I said "pragmatic principle", I'm joining together two concepts; the pragmatic, by which I mean ends rather than means; and principle, by which I mean a rule governing personal behaviour. But I am not an absolute consequentialist; rather, I hold that the systemic consequences of deontological positions should be considered. One should usually be deontological on an individual basis, but adopt certain things as principles - i.e. not necessarily justified under deontology - on a consequentialist basis.
I think you see a parallel between discussion of ideologies associated with 20th century atrocities, and discussion of race as some kind of determinant. And if I deny the latter, that I must deny the former; and since denying the former seems absurd, my position, by analogy, is absurd.
But I don't think that's the right parallel to draw. The parallel of discussion of 20th century atrocities is discussion of racism, not race as a determinant. The parallel of race as a determinant might be an enthusiastic discussion of how Jews run media, banking, etc. - a discussion which is similarly abhorrent and taboo.
What you haven't established clearly for me is an objective criterion for what makes a discussion "abhorrent and taboo."
Why does this matter? Well, we know what makes a discussion "abhorrent and taboo" in the People's Republic of China. It simply boils down to anti-government speech. My suspicion is that when you examine your own epistemology closely enough, you'll find you're applying exactly the same test. It is certainly an objective test!
The "discussion of how Jews run media, banking, etc." is a poor example, I feel, because it's a very easy discussion to have - especially in the light of Cochran & Harpending 2005.
There are two statements here, a factual one which is true and an implicit one which is false. The true statement is that these industries are full of Jews; the false one, that they act collectively as Jews (eg, under the direction of the "Elders of Zion"). We know the false statement to be false because we know that your media or banking Jew is almost always an assimilated, nontribal, anti-nationalist, and in other words communist Jew - utterly indistinguishable from his WASP communist friends. So there's no social network for exclusively Jewish collective action.
What was abhorrent and taboo about that? Except possibly the communist part. Somehow in a world that contains living equivalents of General Blokhin, it's socially taboo to speak ill of communism. Don't you find that a little peculiar?
I'd also warn you against the word "determinant." There are a large number of differences, many surely relevant, between Japan and Haiti. Japan is a much larger island and has a much larger population - not to mention colder weather. We cannot say that genetic diversity is the only reason that international development assistance seems unable to develop Haiti into a new Caribbean Japan - or at least a Singapore. Hence declensions of determine are inappropriate, I feel.
What's good, though, is that we agree there's an elephant in the room. All we disagree on is who's allowed to notice it. What a strange world we live in!
Fascinatingly, in the introduction to the 1938 edition (copyright police missed this one), Boas writes:
"Still worse is the subjection of science to ignorant prejudices in countries controlled by dictators. Such control has extended particularly to books dealing with the subject matter of race and culture. Since nothing is permitted to be printed that runs counter to the ignorant whims and prejudices of the governing clique, there can be no trustworthy science. When a publisher whose pride used to be the number and value of his scientific books announces in his calendar a book trying to show that race mixture is not harmful, withdraws the same book after a dictator comes into power, when great encyclopedias are rewritten according to prescribed tenets, when scientists either do not dare or are not allowed to publish results contradicting the prescribed doctrines, when others, in order to advance their own material interests, or blinded by uncontrolled emotion, follow blindly the prescribed road, no confidence can be placed in their statements. The suppression of intellectual freedom rings the death knell of science."
The best answer to this question I have ever found is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development.
[edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.
If you care to comment, what other books on the subject have you read and what about them made you think Diamond's book is better? (Because this could be interpreted as a flame-baiting statement in a volatile thread, I'm asking from the perspective that book recommendations should follow the requirements outlined here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj... )
An even better answer specific to the "Why Nations Fail" question is in Jared Diamond's Collapse. Which specifically explores the manifold reasons nations and cultures fail.
There is also the elephant in the room with this subject, which is when you look which cultures might be at risk from collapse in the future. Or perhaps I have just read Snowcrash too many times.
Diamond's five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues.
I'd throw resource depletion into the "environmental problems/issues" bucket (interesting that he distinguishes this from "climate change" now that I look at it again).
My own off-the-top-of-my-head list: Overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental contamination, anthropogenic climate change, societal inequities, WMD proliferation (particularly to non-state actors and rogue states), general systemic fragility/complexity, social intransigence in the face of many such issues (e.g.: US counterfactual denial political movements, rightist movements in various EU states, militant Islamist movements, etc.), government / corporate / social corruption, breakdown of social institutions, failures in universal education (primary, secondary, and higher). In no particular order.
This is the most obvious cause only if you are a racist. Genetic differences between races are very minor as compared to the genetic differences between individuals within a race. Furthermore, it is very doubtful that you can find any statistically significant genetic differences between some of the countries mentioned in the article (e.g., England and Spain).
>Genetic differences between races are very minor as compared to the genetic differences between individuals within a race.
So do you agree or disagree with people being "born-that-way", for lack of a better term? That's what's being argued here (at least by me). Not whether "all whites are born that way" or "all blacks are born that way", which is where you seem to be trying to steer it.
Can we not talk about genetic diversity without associating it with race?
However, genetic differences between certain groups of people can be quite significant. Sometimes, they are clustered geographically, like immunity against malaria. Other times, they are clustered based on a shared history and selection pressure, like the Jews. Or math professors.
Afterall, humans came from the same small genetic stock, and races generally reflect adaptation/mutation to particular geographies - not to the very recent economic developments.
Not to mention that diversity and specialization is generally good for trade.
Genetic differences between races are very minor as compared to the genetic differences between individuals within a race.
In case you're posting from a different dimension, these "minor" differences can change the color of our skin, the shape of our bones, and even (gasp) the size of our brains. If these are minor organs, what are major ones?
In case you're posting from the same dimension, your fallacy has a name:
Furthermore, it is very doubtful that you can find any statistically significant genetic differences between some of the countries mentioned in the article (e.g., England and Spain).
You've been keeping up with the latest genomic research, I see! Ha. I jest, of course.
Again, your own eyes are a great start - they really never lie. Have you been to England? Spain? Would you be confident in saying: "Englishmen look just like Spaniards?" Or if there's a difference... what's the cause? The weather, perhaps?
Personally - call me crazy, I know - I feel I can tell an Englishman from a German with much better than random accuracy. If I note that English weather is pretty similar to German weather, does that make me... oh, noes... a racist?
Thank you for the Google link. There I learned that Lewontin's fallacy is a fallacy because "Richard Lewontin is a Marxist Jew who has dedicated his career to attacking genetics as an explanation for human variation." That explains so much.
It is really cute how you think you can tell an Englishman from a German. Do you know, by the way, the genetic make up of the Englishman? Do you know where the word "England" came from? Here is a clue -- it came from the Anglo-Saxons a group of GERMAN tribes that conquered England after the Romans left and later became the people you now call English. So your ability to tell apart the English and Germans based on their look is most likely a figment of your imagination.
Anyways lets not get carried away and stick to the topic at hand. Here is another example from the article -- the economic difference between the southern US and the rest of the US. Could you explain that one. Please tell me how the southerners developed a statistically different genetic make up than northerners in the 400 year period since colonization. I would love to hear about the split between the grits and pizza genes.
Thank you for the Google link. There I learned that Lewontin's fallacy is a fallacy because "Richard Lewontin is a Marxist Jew who has dedicated his career to attacking genetics as an explanation for human variation." That explains so much.
You're really good with teh googles! I guess you read the A.W.F. Edwards paper too:
What's your problem? Apparently from all your submissions and comments you are really fascinated by IQ and Race stuff, besides politics, and you just bring the topic each time you can.
You always create flamewars with people that disagrees with you, this is not Digg if you're old enough to know what this mean.
I also have my motives to believe that you're not a psychometrist, population geneticist or whatever could and that you're probably someone sitting your ass in class each day at Uni.
I am jewish and it always sad to see people acting this way, like you, saying they are jewish.
You probably never read the Shas, as the majority of American jews are not brought up in a religious environment, but Rabbi Shimom ben Gamaliel used to say that the best thing for a man is silence. You can learn a couple of things with the Bavli, what about giving it a try?
You seem interested in reading my comments. You'll read quite a few before you see me flame someone who hasn't already flamed me - usually twice.
It's everyone else who's obsessed with "IQ and Race stuff." They're just obsessed in the other direction. Worse still, they don't know it - because everyone they know has the same obsession. Fear is a kind of obsession, too. Don't we think of the Victorians as obsessed with sex?
And I'm not Jewish, just partly of Jewish descent. I know what "mitzvah" means, however. I'm willing to be downvoted a little because I hate to see smart, thoughtful people stumbling around in the darkness, when they could just turn on the light. At least, from my perspective. I know I spent quite some time stumbling in the darkness - don't you think I used to believe what everyone here believes?
I am not a psychometrist or a population geneticist, but I know some. Also, while not Israeli or even (properly) Jewish, I'm a big fan of Moshe Feiglin:
If one were finalizing ones political views in the 1980's and settling to write ones book, one would be doing so against a background in which the Chinese, the planet's cleverest race, had suffered a truly wretched century, bringing them to misery and ruin. Do brains make a nation rich? No, brains are what makes a nation take a Great Leap Forward.
The plausibility of a link between prosperity and IQ is also going to depend on one's basic assumptions about how nations work. Suppose that national prosperity is basically a battle between the good guys building and the bad guys looting. What happens when both the good guys and the bad guys are smarter? Smarter bad guys makes things worse and the bad guys generally out number the good guys, so it is no surprise that the planet's smartest race lose 30million members to a man made famine.
There are rival basic assumptions, around which one could build ones political theorizing. I like "Man versus Nature". So I'm temperamentally inclined to smarter is better. But I can see how some-one who sees the world as "Man versus Man" would dismiss "IQ leads to prosperity" as not worth considering, because there is no underlying mechanism to make it work.
We've taken kids from the "poor" gene pools to London and they do fine. It's anecdotal but it fairly well quashes the race argument which holds that this should be impossible, and it suggests we look at society and upbringing instead.
This is why some of us point out that articles like this are "Not Hacker News". They inevitably lead to wildly off-topic, and unproductive discussions.
Well, I've learned a lot from the various links that have been thrown around (and expect to learn more when I get around to reading more of them than I have), so I don't think it's entirely unproductive. I agree these posts are "Not Hacker News", but not for their content, or for their "unproductive discussions", but for bringing out the side of HN members for whom disagreement ==> downvote, and disagreement-from-majority-view ==> downvote-to-oblivion. It's unpleasant to witness and I have enough outlets for my unpleasant-reality-seeking desires; HN is nice because it's still not overall unpleasant like for instance Reddit.
The graph on the Wikipedia page looks like it would correlate well with climate. (I've always had a pet theory about climate and the history of academic and economic development.)
I've read several years ago a study from MIT IIRC that actually correlated economic development with climate. Truth is that this is a complex matter with many important and simultaneous factors...
Nations fail due to low average intelligence and high average psychopathic tendencies. The reasons for those things are multitudinous, of course, but the ruling class is a result more often than a cause.
I recently researched the thorny issue of what consititutes art, and the leading idea in that field is a cluster theory: a set of ten ideas which commonly associated with things accepted as art. Some objects don't have all ten, but together they provide a powerful guide. My point in mentioning this is that state failure seems to follow the same pattern. Geography (ie Jared Diamond's theory) is a factor in state success and failure. Culture is another factor. Economic system and the nature of institutions (extractive or inclusive) are two more factors. (And there's bound to be a few more).
A state can succeed with only a couple of these. Lacking them all is a sure sign of failure. Having them all likely comes as close to guaranteeing success as possible. But thinking there's some single indicator that determines state failure is a doomed project.