[Smartaleck]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?

[DreadCthulhu]

Well, most of the worlds landmass is in the northern hemisphere; and a larger percentage of the southern hemisphere's land is of marginal value - think Antarctica, the Australian desert, the tropical rainforest in South America + Africa, and so on. This alone would make for more successful northern countries, as there are more of them.

The northern hemisphere benifits from the massive east-west axis stretching from Japan though China, India, the Middle East, and into Europe, where is was fairly easy for food plants & domestic animals to be relocated(ie you can grow the same food plants almost anywhere in this area), and where the climate is the best for large scale human habitation. You'll notice that most of the worlds major civilizations started in this area. The second largest horizontal axis on earth is in the United States & Southern Canada.

[MarkL]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?

I think that Dr. Walter Williams stated a more likely reason in a recent article. He believes the reason for the success of the West is due to the combination of liberty, freedom and captitalism.

This makes quite a bit of sense. Liberty and freedom grant a person the opportunity to succeed or fail. Add property rights to the mix, and a person has incentive to succeed. Lots of people succeeding and producing brings prosperity to the society. On the other hand, when you have a collective society, which may be required for survival, for a short time and for small groups, you will invariably wind up with people who have no incentive to produce, and will wind up with more and more people who either do nothing, or produce the bare minimum. At the beginning of a collective society, there may be incentive in that if they don't produce, the people will die, which seems to be a pretty good incentive. The problem with collectivism is that it stagnates society. The key to the "success" of a collective society is that it can only exist for a short time before it collapses. And the greater the population, the shorter the period it will exist, without needing force to keep the society running.

And that's the key... When you look at most African nations, they're actually quite rich in natural resources. However the societies that are running those nations are killing the people.

Mark

[Cronos]

I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?

hmmm.. lessee: Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Persian, Greek, Roman, Western. All northern Hemisphere. Kind of hard on the South Africans, Australians, Argentines, Chileans etc.