The Birth of Plenty:
How the Prosperity of
the Modern World was Created
by William Bernstein
Paperback
Audio Download
Posted on 08/02/2010 3:00:32 PM PDT by reaganaut1
The recent finding that economic success in life is largely determined by what you learned in kindergarten has proven contentious (at least among our readers). So what if I told you that economic success was instead determined by what your ancestors did more than a millennium ago?
That is one implication of a provocative new study by Diego Comin, William Easterly (known for his skepticism of foreign aid programs) and Erick Gong.
The study gathered crude information on the state of technological development in various parts of the world in 1000 B.C.; around the birth of Jesus; and in A.D. 1500. It then compared these measures to per capita income today.
As it turns out, technology in A.D. 1500 is an extraordinarily reliable predictor of wealth today. Here’s a scatter plot showing the relationship between these two measures, in which each dot represents a different country:
As Mr. Easterly writes in an accompanying blog post, “78 percent of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe is explained by technology differences that already existed in 1500 A.D. – even BEFORE the slave trade and colonialism.”
What’s more, these differences in technological development between regions had actually appeared as far back as 1000 B.C. (Side note: The big counterexample is China, which historically outshone other countries in its adoption of advanced technologies, but then did not go through the Industrial Revolution.)
There are multiple ways to explain persistence of technological differences over multiple millenniums.
...
In this earlier paper, Mr. Sachs and his co-authors argued that geography can help determine a country’s destiny, since location and climate have significant effects on the likelihood of disease burdens, transportation costs and agricultural productivity.
(Excerpt) Read more at economix.blogs.nytimes.com ...
A D-8 Cat gets the job done too!
Yes it does, yes they did, (and yes it is).
But do you realize how many giant termites it takes to equal one ribeye?
On the other hand, the termites are nice and crunchy.
http://article.nationalreview.com/267356/in-defense-of-elitism/jonah-goldberg
About a decade ago, one of the Smithsonian museums here in Washington had an exhibit on the history of human civilization, or something along those lines. I didn't see it, but a friend of mine went and his description always stuck with me. One of the displays was a comparative timeline of different cultures. At, say, 1250 you'd see what the British, the Japanese, the Chinese, or the Arabs had come up with. The sight that really struck home for my friend was a beautiful Renaissance Italian clock, with movable gears and a stunning hand-painted face with a sun and moon alternating for AM and PM. The clock came from the 15th or 16th century, I think. But that's not really important. On the same timeline for African culture there was a wood mask with eye- and mouth-holes cut out in some "novel" way. The little explanatory card on the wall tried to make it sound, somehow, as though the handcrafted clock and the mask were similarly impressive accomplishments. To which my friend responded, roughly, "Are you high?"
I may have gotten the details a bit off here, but the substance is obviously true. Some things are better than other things. Some cultures are better than other cultures. Some things are more worth studying, celebrating, and emulating than other things. Or as the late William Henry III put it in his wonderful book, In Defense of Elitism, "It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose."
The biggest bean predator is called "The Colorado Bean Beatle".
It is, in fact, the only serious bean predator in that region.
You go to the tropics and subtropics and there are THOUSANDS of bean predators.
Mexico's primry cuisine is based on the use of beans. That one country purchases 90% of America's bean crop ~
It's a good deal for the Mexicans and a good deal for the American bean farmers.
I don't find that controversial. I guess a high protein BBQ-based diet reduces anxiety too.
The dumb ones were all eaten by reindeer.
... or moose.
This study ignores the influence of Christianity.
Belief in Christianity eliminates the fear of curses from shamans. Belief in a rational God allows one to believe that rational earthly behavior will have rational outcomes. The invisible monsters lurking behind every tree today are not going to steal his hope in tomorrow.
Christianity also fosters a culture of honesty. Once a person can trust his neighbor to be honest, he no longer needs as much reliance on his clan or tribe. He can reach out to outlying communities. He can make contracts that he trusts will be upheld by his neighbor and honest judges.
So without the Church, there could never have been a Galileo right? Heathens like Aristotle weren’t able to form rational thoughts for fear of boogeymen?
While it is true that this is the MOST conducive environment for wealth creation, freedom does not necessitate wealth nor vice-versa. You said history was your guide, so think it over historically. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were richer than any African country will EVER be. Rome was in some ways free in its early years and developed wealth during this period, but it continued to grow extremely wealthy long after freedom had been snuffed out.
Need to see the R-squared but it looks like a fairly strong correlation...
Sounds like the PC version of The Bell Curve...
It is impossible for me to respond to a strawman of your own creation.
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were richer than any African country will EVER be.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Huh?
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan fostered political beliefs that quickly expressed itself in military action. That military action caused the near total destruction of all the wealth of their nations...nearly every last yen and mark.
Excellent point. The Anglo Saxon concept of property rights and rule of law grew out of Judeo-Christian beliefs. It's no accident that the most advanced countries have a Judeo Christian tradition, even if they've abandoned it in the last 100 years.
The countries you mentioned may have been rich (although that is debatable), but the average citizen was poor compared to what they could have been had it been a free society. Freedom includes access to education and that is the fuel which powers a free society.
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Thanks reaganaut1. |
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The Birth of Plenty:
How the Prosperity of
the Modern World was Created
by William Bernstein
Paperback
Audio Download
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