Poor countries are poor because of bad culture. Rich countries are rich because of superior culture. The Left cannot accept this.

[DarthOne]

This is little something I found on another website; IT IS NOT MINE.

I thought I'd share it here and I'm curious to see what people think of it, and how it holds up to scrutiny from people more informed than I am.

Poor countries are poor because of bad culture. Rich countries are rich because of superior culture. The Left cannot accept this.

This is my rebuttal to a youtube video from a somewhat popular Youtuber, Wendover Productions, titled Why the Southern Hemisphere is Poorer. The dude can be amateurish, and his overly forced voice affectation is annoying, but he does decent research sometimes. Not this time. This video he just put out gave me flashbacks to my Marxist-professor-taught sociology classes in college in the 90s in which I was told that white people only got lucky, and that Europe wasn't better, and here are a dozen excuses for why Africa is poor as shit and only regressed since colonialism. Wendover just basically repeats these tropes without even putting in any serious effort to try to support them.

This entire video is an embarrassing violation of the basic principle that "correlation is not causation". Wendover doesn't even attempt to prove that the absurd idea that peoples are predestined to succeed or fail based on latitude, he just assumes it to be true because, hey, Norway and Japan are rich while Africa is poor. Nonsense. He then moves on to try to "explain" why this is so, but his offered explanations are just rehashes of old marxist academic excuses which are founded on "white people bad" anti-colonialism that the USSR pushed throughout the Cold War to try to turn poor countries away from NATO countries.

Everything in this video is just a rehash of old arguments trying to excuse why Africa has failed that strain to avoid the only obvious and correct answer: bad culture. Libs think that saying poor countries are that way because of bad culture is racist, even though some white countries are very poor (Balkans) and some non-white countries are very rich (Japan).

• Wendover claims Europe has an advantage because wheat grows better in Europe. Wheat? Seriously? Wheat was selectively bred by Europeans to be adapted to their climate. Of COURSE it performs better in Europe. Other climates and cultures have their own crops - not wheat - which are better adapted to their climates and perform the same function. Wendover acts like wheat being more suited to Europe is the reason that Europe employs fewer people in agriculture, but this is nonsense. The only reason modern countries cut their agriculture workforces is due to mechanization and similar technological advancements. Europe still had almost everyone working in agriculture a few centuries ago despite this wheat thing, so it explains nothing.
  
  
• Wendover then says that there are more diseases in tropical areas, so this is the excuse for why those areas didn't develop, but this again is nonsense, and it doesn't even broadly correlate to economic outcomes. Plenty of "high disease" areas developed rapidly despite this. Have you ever heard of JAMESTOWN and other US colonies? Disease was rampant and these people practically lived in a swamp, yet they adapted and overcame, thanks to their superior culture. Also: Australia.
  
  
• Wendover claims that, well, the UK got a head start, it just got lucky to hit the Industrial Revolution first, so it pulled ahead and left others in the dust, as if the UK rising up somehow magically pushed everyone else down. I guess Wendover has never heard of Japan, which started industrialization far later than everyone else, including Russia, and yet in a few short decades, literally from 1868 to 1904, eclipsed the Russian Empire to such a degree that Japan utterly crushed and humiliated the Russians in a major war. Why? Because Japan has superior cultural institutions that allowed it to rapidly assimilate Europe's breakthroughs and adapt it to its own society, such that by the 1930s Japan had the most powerful naval strike force in the world, and utterly dominated the whole Pacific region, easily stomping all other powers with the solitary exception of the US.
  
  
• Wendover then comes back to the argument that the rich early developers hold everyone else down. LOL. One word. China. Not even going to bother explaining this one.

Cold weather is a massive handicap, it does not help. This is why the dominant civilizations through most of history were: the Roman Empire, Imperial China, and various Muslim/Persian empires, all of which arose in lower, temperate latitudes.

Europe rose to domination because of (1) Christianity providing a stabilizing group identity, resulting in (2) a stable environment of competition which avoided things like genocide or collapse into Empire, and consequently the stagnation that arose in Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire.

None of this has anything to do with climate or temperature or latitude. It just so happened that the superior culture arose in Western Europe, which was superior everywhere it went. Australia proves that even Europe's outcasts quickly outproduced any other Pacific peoples by a wide margin.

The points expressed in this video basically amount to cultural Marxism. Many of these talking points were promoted by the USSR. They have evolved into things such as denouncing successful black Americans for "acting white" because they went to school and got good jobs.

 

[Syzygy]

I agree that the evidence proposed to explain the impoverishment of southern hemispheres is bogus. I disagree, or am at the very least doubtful, that culture plays a pivotal role in the development of a nation's economy.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Yeah, the geography of a nation matters a lot too. Poland hasn't been invaded six hundred billion times because Poles have a culture that favors being invaded, Poland just happens to be a key location where it's easy to move an army from one side of Europe to the other so any invasion force tends to go through Poland first.

 

[BlackDragon98]

Poor countries are poor because of bad culture. Rich countries are rich because of superior culture. The Left cannot accept this.

Very true @DarthOne

Why is Africa poor? Because all they ever do is fight each other for one reason or another. It's always some tribal conflict or the other.

Why did China become so rich so fast? Because all they ever do is strive to make more money (often through any means possible, though that's another story for another day).

The Left are beyond reasoning and logic. They are nothing more than brainwashed animals who can do nothing but howl like the savage subhumans they are.

 

[DarthOne]

Poor countries are poor because of bad culture. Rich countries are rich because of superior culture. The Left cannot accept this.

Very true @DarthOne

Why is Africa poor? Because all they ever do is fight each other for one reason or another. It's always some tribal conflict or the other.

Why did China become so rich so fast? Because all they ever do is strive to make more money (often through any means possible, though that's another story for another day).

The Left are beyond reasoning and logic. They are nothing more than brainwashed animals who can do nothing but howl like the savage subhumans they are.

Thank you, though as I said I didn't write up or make that little essay, just shared it.

 

[Cherico]

lots of things matter


geography, demographics, culture all of it matters, but culture insitution they are how you play your hand the other stuff is the hand your dealt. A bad hand can be played well (see singapor) and a good hand can be played badly (see argentina.)

 

[Morphic Tide]

There's also plain and simple luck of your smart people going down the right holes, like figuring out wheels and inquiring about the nature of learning. The Native Americans would have taken vastly longer to get anything like the Ford plant happening, because they were fractious tribes reliant on subsistence agriculture, herding, hunting wild fauna, and raiding the farmers and herders.

We see that the Native Americans had every cognitive ability to do so with the Five Civilized Tribes, IIRC, who bootstrapped themselves to be quite solid peers of the European settlers, societally, in... What, a hundred and fifty years? Less time in terms of seriously trying it. But the key thing is that they imported technology to be able to be stable at the scale needed for the European settler's way of life, allowing them to fight off the squabbling tribal bullshit.

There's also a critical labor gap with just the Americas, as you have to go directly from raw man-hours to labor-saving devices. There are no serious draft animals available. On the entire landmass. They're either too unruly or too weak. This is a huge problem because draft animals can turn whole new portions of crops into useful labor, making for a critical allowance for urbanization as we know it.

Peruvian terrace farmers operated on much the same paradigm as the Ancient Greek city-state's farmers, as they were in walkable range of the city because the city was restricted by farmland and the farmland was restricted by mountains. Because they had to do everything by hand, they had far fewer man-hours to spare on learning or craftsmanship. Alpacas are barely usable as pack animals, they really are not usable for easing farmwork like Europe is used to.

 

[Scottty]

lots of things matter

This.
The reasons why some countries are doing better than others economically are many and various. When it all gets pushed into one single explanation, that's an ideology talking, and probably an agenda.

Nor is the economic state of any given part of the world something set in stone. Ireland was dirt poor once. Argentina was once going quite well.

 

[Morphic Tide]

A good example of this is that Venezuela was in fact a very good country under Hugo Chaves in quite a number of respects, but the Socialists completely ignored economic diversification like several neighboring countries did to instead maximize gibs, so the instant the prices for their sulfurous shit of oil dipped they proceeded with the rampant looting that has so far proven inevitable of avowed socialist regimes.

They could have been unironically good Socialists. Now they're just another example case for the various memes, because they failed to leverage natural resources to build something other than oil as an industry to fund the healthcare. They're basically fully collapsing because the regime is focusing so much on perpetuating itself that it's fucking over the oil industry that had it working, and every single method of running away with money is being employed to dodge the state's looting.

 

[Simonbob]

There's a theory running around certain circles, that having abundant resources makes things too easy, and that leads to lazy people, and to breeding for the level of capablity needed.

This theory says that places like Northern Europe and Japan, amongst others, have winters cold enough to kill. If you fail to prepare, if you lack the discipline to both save enough resources, and not use them unrestrained, you, and your family will not live.

If you're lacking pattern recognition, evolution will favor somebody else.




There's a reason why ethnic groups have different average IQ's.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I think one contributing factor is the ability to distribute stuff and knowledge. Europe might have also developed faster because of the network of roads, and the common Christian culture, and the Latin root language. Similarly, China had a vast network of roads and bridges and rivers, and a lot of shared language and systems of writing in the Far East. Europe lucked on the invention of the printing press, which made distributing knowledge and blueprints and the bureaucratic more efficient, so technology developed faster and industrialization accelerated, etc. And once the British Empire got going, they went to China trying to gain access to the biggest market in the world, and you had an exchange of stuff and knowledge flowing both ways through the Chinese and British and European distribution networks.

To my knowledge, you don't really have such vast distribution networks in the Southern hemisphere. I think the Mayans and/or the Aztecs built small empires, but didn't have vast road systems like the Romans or the Chinese built.

 

[Jormungandr]

There's also plain and simple luck of your smart people going down the right holes, like figuring out wheels and inquiring about the nature of learning. The Native Americans would have taken vastly longer to get anything like the Ford plant happening, because they were fractious tribes reliant on subsistence agriculture, herding, hunting wild fauna, and raiding the farmers and herders.

We see that the Native Americans had every cognitive ability to do so with the Five Civilized Tribes, IIRC, who bootstrapped themselves to be quite solid peers of the European settlers, societally, in... What, a hundred and fifty years? Less time in terms of seriously trying it. But the key thing is that they imported technology to be able to be stable at the scale needed for the European settler's way of life, allowing them to fight off the squabbling tribal bullshit.

There's also a critical labor gap with just the Americas, as you have to go directly from raw man-hours to labor-saving devices. There are no serious draft animals available. On the entire landmass. They're either too unruly or too weak. This is a huge problem because draft animals can turn whole new portions of crops into useful labor, making for a critical allowance for urbanization as we know it.

Peruvian terrace farmers operated on much the same paradigm as the Ancient Greek city-state's farmers, as they were in walkable range of the city because the city was restricted by farmland and the farmland was restricted by mountains. Because they had to do everything by hand, they had far fewer man-hours to spare on learning or craftsmanship. Alpacas are barely usable as pack animals, they really are not usable for easing farmwork like Europe is used to.

The Native Americans, North and South, however, actually settled and created cities, albeit at much, much later than their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The Natives in North America, for example, founded Cahokia and a confederation that used the Mississippi like the Egyptians used the Nile; unfortunately for them, natural disasters, famine/poor harvesting seasons and agricultural planning, and human nature caused the cities to crumble and be abandoned. Hell, they were still active, albeit in decline/at their end, when the first European Explorers were poking around (disease helped to finish them off, basically).

In the South, the various civilizations there such as the Aztecs and Mayans (and not including all the minor civilizations and cultures which opposed them during their early years, much like how the Estrucians were there for Rome), while advanced for their level of development, were pretty much where Europeans and Asians were thousands of years ago.

Time ran out for them, and it was never on their side.

If no-one discovered the Americans for another thousand years (unlikely), and barring some calamity that destroyed civilization in Europe and Asia or set it back heavily, you'd have a modern Mayan or Aztec (or their descendant) civilization being suborned by what our civilization could look like in a thousand years.

I always found Stargate's various civilizations, like the Tollan, strangely apt for this example, which is ironic since the Tollan were descendants of South American tribes, IIRC.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The Native Americans, North and South, however, actually settled and created cities, albeit at much, much later than their counterparts in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The Natives in North America, for example, founded Cahokia and a confederation that used the Mississippi like the Egyptians used the Nile; unfortunately for them, natural disasters, famine/poor harvesting seasons and agricultural planning, and human nature caused the cities to crumble and be abandoned. Hell, they were still active, albeit in decline/at their end, when the first European Explorers were poking around (disease helped to finish them off, basically).

Yup, a lot of armchair historians never realize that the natives seen by early European colonists, living in tents and bark huts and the like, were basically the shattered apocalypse survivors after plagues wiped out 90-95% of their civilization.

Then you see the ruins of the cities they had before that and realize that before said apocalypse crushed them, they were vastly more advanced than wigwams and tipis.

 

[Largo]

There's a theory running around certain circles, that having abundant resources makes things too easy, and that leads to lazy people, and to breeding for the level of capablity needed.

This theory says that places like Northern Europe and Japan, amongst others, have winters cold enough to kill. If you fail to prepare, if you lack the discipline to both save enough resources, and not use them unrestrained, you, and your family will not live.

If you're lacking pattern recognition, evolution will favor somebody else.




There's a reason why ethnic groups have different average IQ's.

Ignoring that last sentence for now, this is is backwards. Cold is easier to deal with than heat. If you're cold, you make a fire or put on some extra animal skins. If you're hot, there's not much you can do about it, and people in those areas often would have no choice but to stop working and being productive during the day. There's a reason why air conditioning was a major factor in the rise of cities like DC or Houston.

 

[Circle of Willis]

When confronted with people who chalk all the Third World's woes to colonialism and European meddling in general, I like point to the Botswana/Zimbabwe dichotomy. Two landlocked neighbors, one a mostly-desert backwater that had been screwed by the aftershocks of the Mfecane and was then valued largely if not purely for its mineral wealth by the British, while the other was Africa's breadbasket and a popular attraction for settlers.

Fast forward to the present day and Botswana has become one of Africa's oldest and most consistently stable democracy with a reasonable grasp on the rule of law, further blessed with one of the world's fastest-growing economies and a total lack of civil wars or even major unrest in its post-colonial history - a miracle by modern African standards. Meanwhile, Rhodesia has become Zimbabwe, a hellhole so bad that its entire story can be (and I'm sure has been, somewhere) told entirely through Internet memes about its horrible, horrible decline.

Even though it was 70% desert and I really doubt anybody in 1960 would've guessed it would prosper while neighboring Rhodesia imploded, Botswana did have one things going for it that the Zimbabweans can only wish they had: a sensible, even heroic, post-colonial leader in Seretse Khama, who stands out among the rogues' gallery of late 20th century African leaders for his diligence & honesty, absence of megalomania, lack of inclination toward violence and refusal to stoke the fires of racism (him being married to a white woman in what was, by all accounts, a deeply loving relationship until he died of cancer probably helped with that last one).

• He skipped out on the socialism common to the post-colonial African nations in favor of adopting free-market capitalism & low taxes to drive economic growth;
• Then he actually invested the money from that economic growth into improving Botswana instead of pocketing it;
• All the while, he maintained strong anti-corruption measures to minimize cronyism & embezzlement;
• He also fought to assert the rule of law & insisted on having real, regular elections with a real opposition rather than take the easy way out and become a despot like so many of his peers, even when it meant his party lost ground in the National Assembly from time to time;
• And finally he retained white experts in their jobs post-independence to help build up Botswana, rather than blaming them for all of his problems and kicking them out ASAP. In general Botswana maintained a positive - even downright harmonious - relationship between its black supermajority and the white minority, at the same time that South Africa was busy imposing apartheid and the Rhodesian Bush War was raging right next door.

Meanwhile Zimbabwe got...Robert Mugabe, with all that he entailed. But even outside that most obvious neighborly comparison, Khama was practically a saint compared to literally every other 20th century African leader I can think of right now. Sure Botswana still has problems (IIRC a fifth of their population has AIDS) but it's probably the single best country in sub-Saharan Africa to live in, even taking other greats like Nigeria (which, unlike Botswana, does have a long history of ethnic & sectarian warfare) into account.

What wonders can spring from a man (and his similarly minded successors) who encourages and actively builds a culture prioritizing hard work, honesty, responsibility, and valuing people for their deeds over the color of their skin rather than one of greed, graft, racial resentment and violent hatred? Well, taking a barren, landlocked desert and turning it into the closest sub-Saharan Africa has to a paradise seems to be within the realm of possibilities.

 

[Simonbob]

Ignoring that last sentence for now, this is is backwards. Cold is easier to deal with than heat. If you're cold, you make a fire or put on some extra animal skins. If you're hot, there's not much you can do about it, and people in those areas often would have no choice but to stop working and being productive during the day. There's a reason why air conditioning was a major factor in the rise of cities like DC or Houston.

Not true, on the scale I'm talking about. Go back a thousand years.


In a cold enough winter, if you don't have enough firewood, you and your family die. Fail to both set asside enough food, and ration it out properly, people die. In the frozen winter, if you don't plan well, and sometimes, even if you do, death.

Meanwhile, in the middle of African winter, you go for a wander, and get some food, and with the heat, you can't store it long, anyway. Plan ahead? For many of the most needed things, you can only plan so far. Food doesn't last, how often are you going to need new weapons anyway, and if you're going hunting you can look for more useful stuff(rocks and sticks of the right type) while you're out there.


Difference's in how hard things were leading to one group rising to the challenges, and one not bothering.

prioritizing hard work, honesty, responsibility

Commonly known as the Protestant Work Ethic. Not common, world wide, but very, very important. There are nations who have 20 IQ points on average above the Botswana average, and Botswana keeps up, and is in fact, in some ways, better off.


Culture matters, that's a fact.

 

[ATP]

This is little something I found on another website; IT IS NOT MINE.

I thought I'd share it here and I'm curious to see what people think of it, and how it holds up to scrutiny from people more informed than I am.

Poor countries are poor because of bad culture. Rich countries are rich because of superior culture. The Left cannot accept this.

True.Rhodesia was one of the richest african countries.They turned it into Zimbabwe - and we get poorest one.
Not mention Korea.The same people,the same cyvilisation - but South take western culture,and North soviet one.Difference could be see from orbit during nights.

 

[Doomsought]

When Europeans met the Americas, the Americas as a whole were at the same point that Eurasia had been when Sargon of Akkad ruled Mesopotamia. Cold worked copper and gold are basically the last discoveries before a stone aged civilization becomes a bronze aged one.

 

[ATP]

When Europeans met the Americas, the Americas as a whole were at the same point that Eurasia had been when Sargon of Akkad ruled Mesopotamia. Cold worked copper and gold are basically the last discoveries before a stone aged civilization becomes a bronze aged one.

Inkas - and their predaccessors - knew bronze,but never manage to made it in numbers.So average indian soldiers,or even guards,fought with stone weapons,when commanders used bronze axes capable of cutting spanish helmet in half/with spanish head inside/

 

[Doomsought]

Inkas - and their predaccessors - knew bronze,but never manage to made it in numbers.So average indian soldiers,or even guards,fought with stone weapons,when commanders used bronze axes capable of cutting spanish helmet in half/with spanish head inside/

Sort of how like the Hittites had iron while everyone else was in the bronze age? That doesn't disprove my point, technological levels are inconsistent. The Indians were on the cusp of entering the bronze age, but failed to push forwards. We know that in Eurasia that the Bronze age by necessity required massive continent wide trade networks to get both copper and tin in the same place. It is very likely that cultures like the Aztecs becoming blockers to trade was what kept the Indians so primitive.