More good Sunday viewing

Published: February 1, 2015 at 10:56am

I really enjoyed this – I particularly like the reference to clan-based thinking.

11 Comments Comment

  1. ken says:

    Great feature. Complex issues turned comprehensible for everyone. Exactly why I believe religions should be a personal position not one of ecclesia.

  2. Stephen Borg Fiteni says:

    I think religiousness is a consequence of poverty, not a cause. People in desperate situations have more of a need to seek comfort in things like religion.

    On a scale of thousands of years, geography has been the ultimate determinant of how civilizations progressed. Almost all of the world’s domesticable plants and animals are native to Eurasia (in a region known as the ‘Fertile Crescent’ and in China). Without farming, it is difficult for complex societies to develop as hunting does not produce much of a food surplus and so no one will be able to specialize (for example in crafting).

    Tribes that were lucky enough to be situated next to these regions of early food production thus had a head start of thousands of years, and this is why Eurasians and North Africans have done much better than everyone else, and why the Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians were comparatively primitive when the Europeans arrived.

    It really destroys the misconception that people of wealthy countries have some ‘innate’ ability that other people don’t have.

    • Edward says:

      I only partly agree with that. As the video suggests, the institutions are the main driving force behind success.

      I agree with what you say in terms of how it explains why the “West” was ahead to begin with, but I think today is a different story.

      Poor countries would do better if they based policy on facts, science and common sense, and had the discipline to make their institutions work. Things Malta seems to lack too.

      • Stephen Borg Fiteni says:

        Of course today is a different story and the video is spot on.

        However the theory does help to explain why the “West” ended up the be the culture with the strong institutions and why sub-Saharan Africa, which is where there are the poorest countries, has lagged behind.

      • Edward says:

        I think we have read the same books, Mr Borg Fiteni. :-)

      • Stephen Borg Fiteni says:

        I got this from ‘Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies’ by Jared Diamond, which I strongly recommend.

      • Wormfood says:

        This sounds like a rehashing of Jared Diamond’s flawed theories.

  3. Adolf says:

    What has been left out or maybe I missed is that it suites the multinationals that these poor countries are kept destablised or led by corrupt persons since this makes access to raw materials unimaginably cheap. It is the first commandment in the economics bible of the powerful companies.

  4. Edward says:

    As it says, the secret to a successful country is mainly good and solid institutions and the general mentality of the people.

    Geography is also a factor, though it is more of an opportunity to get creative.

    Geography was once the reason why Western Europe was so poor way back in the Middle Ages. It was too far from China and the Middle East, where the money was and transporting goods was expensive because of the distance and the fact that there were mountains and rivers in the way.

    But then being in Western Europe became an advantage as it was the closest to the Americas and travelling there from Spain, the UK and France was easier than from, say, Turkey.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      I see you’re familiar with the Gallup-Sachs-Mellinger theory, but you’re quoting it wrong. Western Europe got rich faster because the distance between the raw materials, the workforce, the cities and the ports was, when you take everything into account, shorter. Plus many other factors.

      Factors which are no longer dominant. Enter Piketty, who is extensively tweet-quoted by our genius neoliberal Professor Minister of the Economy, who does all the opposite of what Piketty suggests.

      Anyway, no one’s listening so why bother.

      One last thing: Obama is raising taxes on the rich. Maybe he’s read Piketty. Maybe he’s even understood him.

  5. Wormfood says:

    This sounds like a rehashing of Jared Diamond’s flawed theories. He is a zoologist by training and he is wrong on many things.

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