By poor I mean the general standard of living.
I have heard before that Africa is 'the most mineral rich continent in the world'. While I find proving this seems to be exceedingly difficult (if even possible), I would at least concede that, in terms of mineral wealth, the African continent is probably no worse off than any of the others ...
So what gives? Why do I see TV personalities selling the plight of these starving people? Are Africans really unable to develop any sort of infrastructure to provide basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter, and medicine?
Southern:Even the native americans of North America adapted to the threat of European conquest. They adopted horses, firearms, and (in some cases) different political structures to resist. Ultimately they lost the battle of demographics but even they (who were further behind Africa technologicly) adapted and changed. Africa has been much slower to change than any other group.
Africa was changing very rapidly up to 1950. They were building enormous cities of modern buildings.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
E. R. Olovetto: Southern: Marko:I would speculate this has a lot to do with governments being rather powerless due to Africans chronically lacking reverence for the government and the state. Or during the cold war the soviet union and united states used thier influence to maintain a balance of power. Making it very dangerous for the states of Africa to wage blatant war against one another. To blatantly attack neighboring nations risked loosing support from the two superpowers or even worse becoming a "problem" for them. Only speculation on my part. I guess it is somewhere past the 1,000 people/day that were dying in Angola's proxy war to be called "blatant war" huh?
Southern: Marko:I would speculate this has a lot to do with governments being rather powerless due to Africans chronically lacking reverence for the government and the state. Or during the cold war the soviet union and united states used thier influence to maintain a balance of power. Making it very dangerous for the states of Africa to wage blatant war against one another. To blatantly attack neighboring nations risked loosing support from the two superpowers or even worse becoming a "problem" for them. Only speculation on my part.
Marko:I would speculate this has a lot to do with governments being rather powerless due to Africans chronically lacking reverence for the government and the state.
Or during the cold war the soviet union and united states used thier influence to maintain a balance of power. Making it very dangerous for the states of Africa to wage blatant war against one another. To blatantly attack neighboring nations risked loosing support from the two superpowers or even worse becoming a "problem" for them. Only speculation on my part.
I guess it is somewhere past the 1,000 people/day that were dying in Angola's proxy war to be called "blatant war" huh?
From what I understand it was a civil war where each faction was supported by either the Soviets or the US. Not naked aggression of one state against another which is what my comment was addressing. That would have been strongly discouraged. Its all politics and semantics.
Stranger: Southern:Even the native americans of North America adapted to the threat of European conquest. They adopted horses, firearms, and (in some cases) different political structures to resist. Ultimately they lost the battle of demographics but even they (who were further behind Africa technologicly) adapted and changed. Africa has been much slower to change than any other group. Africa was changing very rapidly up to 1950. They were building enormous cities of modern buildings.
It stopped in most every country once the colonies were granted self rule.
Southern: It stopped in most every country once the colonies were granted self rule.
Maybe that's what should be investigated, "self-rule".
Marko: Southern: Or during the cold war the soviet union and united states used thier influence to maintain a balance of power. Making it very dangerous for the states of Africa to wage blatant war against one another. To blatantly attack neighboring nations risked loosing support from the two superpowers or even worse becoming a "problem" for them. Only speculation on my part. It didn't stop conventional wars on other continents.
Southern: Or during the cold war the soviet union and united states used thier influence to maintain a balance of power. Making it very dangerous for the states of Africa to wage blatant war against one another. To blatantly attack neighboring nations risked loosing support from the two superpowers or even worse becoming a "problem" for them. Only speculation on my part.
It didn't stop conventional wars on other continents.
And in almost every case the US and Soviets were involved attempting to preserve the status quo. An example is Vietnam. The US wasent playing to win only preserve South Vietnam.
Marko:No, not to the same extent. The social norm in Africa is that if you get a mid level position in the government that you take care of your extended family by getting all of your relatives decent government jobs. If you do not do this then the family considers you a bad and ungrateful person. Try herding that sort of people to die on the Somme by their thousands.There isn't any of the pledge of allegiance, saluting the flag type nationalism.
Maybe, but nationalism has caused the same type of infighting and civil strife that, I guess you could call it tribalism, has caused. Think the Balkans the break up of the Soviet Union, or the future break up of the US(lol maybe).
Marko: Southern: Someone said it earlier in this thread that the rise of Africa should be easier than the rise of Europe simply because the ideas and technology that allows development dont have to be invented. If you look at east Asia (parts of China, Tiawan, Korea, Japan), thier develpment over the past 50 years has been at break neck speed. Why have these people embraced western ideas and technology? Actually it is the other way around. African elites were schooled in colonial metropolas and were exposed to the West in a great way. China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan on the other hand had elites that were bred locally. So I wouldn't link success with "embracing western ideas". Marxism is a western idea.
Southern: Someone said it earlier in this thread that the rise of Africa should be easier than the rise of Europe simply because the ideas and technology that allows development dont have to be invented. If you look at east Asia (parts of China, Tiawan, Korea, Japan), thier develpment over the past 50 years has been at break neck speed. Why have these people embraced western ideas and technology?
Someone said it earlier in this thread that the rise of Africa should be easier than the rise of Europe simply because the ideas and technology that allows development dont have to be invented. If you look at east Asia (parts of China, Tiawan, Korea, Japan), thier develpment over the past 50 years has been at break neck speed. Why have these people embraced western ideas and technology?
Well the point was that they would not need to reinvent the wheel.
Europe used to be just as poor as Africa is. The real question is why did Europe become rich? That's the anomaly. Basically Europe underwent and industrial revolution while Africa is still more or less caught in the Malthusian trap.
While institutional factors such as property rights protection and political decentralization are important, I think the crucial difference is that whites have a higher IQ. Time preference, the willingness to save and invest, is related to intelligence. So is the ability to conceive of higher productivity, roundabout methods of production. Whites are on average about 10 IQ points higher then sub-Saharan Africans and there is a 0.7 correlation between national per capita income and IQ.
Stephen: Europe used to be just as poor as Africa is. The real question is why did Europe become rich? That's the anomaly. Basically Europe underwent and industrial revolution while Africa is still more or less caught in the Malthusian trap. While institutional factors such as property rights protection and political decentralization are important, I think the crucial difference is that whites have a higher IQ. Time preference, the willingness to save and invest, is related to intelligence. So is the ability to conceive of higher productivity, roundabout methods of production. Whites are on average about 10 IQ points higher then sub-Saharan Africans and there is a 0.7 correlation between national per capita income and IQ.
That could lead to ask: couldn’t it be that the alleged causal relation between IQ and development is inverse, i.e. that richer countries allow for greatest intellectual development? Stated like this, it would still leave the question unanswered: why was that Europe managed to get off the ground and enjoy today’s’ “high” IQ points, while Africa did not?
Merlin: Stephen: Europe used to be just as poor as Africa is. The real question is why did Europe become rich? That's the anomaly. Basically Europe underwent and industrial revolution while Africa is still more or less caught in the Malthusian trap. While institutional factors such as property rights protection and political decentralization are important, I think the crucial difference is that whites have a higher IQ. Time preference, the willingness to save and invest, is related to intelligence. So is the ability to conceive of higher productivity, roundabout methods of production. Whites are on average about 10 IQ points higher then sub-Saharan Africans and there is a 0.7 correlation between national per capita income and IQ. That could lead to ask: couldn’t it be that the alleged causal relation between IQ and development is inverse, i.e. that richer countries allow for greatest intellectual development? Stated like this, it would still leave the question unanswered: why was that Europe managed to get off the ground and enjoy today’s’ “high” IQ points, while Africa did not?
There is no doubt that there is an affect on iq derived from being wealthy (nutrition, education, etc.) but the question is can all be attributed to nature or nurture. Most likely it is a combination but nature is very important. All the information that I have seen shows the difference in average IQ between subsaharan africa is much more than just 10 points but is closer to 20. European nations range from around 90-100 while subsahran africa is between 65-75.
It is interesting that east asian nations such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China have a higher average than most european nations, slightly above 100. These nations have shown the greatest rate of economic development over the past 50 years of any region in the world. And it would also seem to show that high iq may not be directly the result of wealth because china is still much poorer than Europe. Its seems they are very intellegent people but communism prevents them from becoming wealthy.
Other things that seem to stick out but are explained when you put the data in the context of the real world. Russia and the former soviet block are all much poorer than the rest of Europe yet still test the same in terms of IQ. Once again it seems that communism prevented them from becoming wealthy.
Merlin:That could lead to ask: couldn’t it be that the alleged causal relation between IQ and development is inverse, i.e. that richer countries allow for greatest intellectual development? Stated like this, it would still leave the question unanswered: why was that Europe managed to get off the ground and enjoy today’s’ “high” IQ points, while Africa did not?
I don't see how an increase of national wealth would raise average IQ in the long run.
I find this explanation far more appealing:
Richard Lynn:The theory I have advanced to explain these race differences in IQ is that when early humans migrated from Africa into Eurasia they encountered the difficulty of survival during cold winters. This problem was especially severe during the ice ages. Plant foods were not available for much of the year and survival required the hunting and dismembering of large animals for food and the ability to make tools, weapons and clothing, to build shelters and make fires. These problems required higher intelligence and exerted selection pressure for enhanced intelligence, particularly on the Orientals.
I also find this to be extremely good.
Stephen:I don't see how an increase of national wealth would raise average IQ in the long run.
It is very easy to understand this once you realize that IQ tests do not measure intelligence. There is no such objective test or standard for intelligence. There isn't even an objective definition or criterion for what intelligence is.
Perhaps, an IQ test is able to better test certain cognitive skills better then other tests but there is no possible way to ever maintain 100% control over other variables, such as experience acquired from the environment. Obviously, people from completely different socioeconomic backrounds with large gaps between the two will score differently on such tests. I believe Thomas Sowell showed this environmental influence over IQ test results a few decades ago. Maybe someone here is familiar with his work on this matter and can provide a link.
It is exposure to the outside world. Christianity gave Europe a common identitiy (to trade and work with their other nations) and motiviation to expand and explore, this allowed much larger division of labor then anywhere else at the time.
Africa was locked in with mostly isolated tribes, and like other tribal societies they stayed like that (I don't know if they even ever had guilds in place).
If China had build great ships instead of a great wall history would be very different.
Seth K:It is exposure to the outside world. Christianity gave Europe a common identitiy (to trade and work with their other nations) and motiviation to expand and explore, this allowed much larger division of labor then anywhere else at the time.
Economic factors such as trade is what motivated the expansion and exploration by european nations. A common identity as christian is not. Christianity has been divided and at ideological war with itself since the time of Christ. First between hundreds of different sects, then between eastern and western, then between Catholic and Protestant.
Seth K:Africa was locked in with mostly isolated tribes, and like other tribal societies they stayed like that (I don't know if they even ever had guilds in place).
All of humanity existed in this same state for thousand of years, yet some took another step and some have not.
Seth K:If China had build great ships instead of a great wall history would be very different.
But China and the rest of East Asia who made a huge mistake isolating themselves from the rest of the world have rectified that mistake over the past 50 years and have had explosive economic growth. Most likely once china frees its entire economy it will develop as rapidly as Korea or Japans.
DD5:There is no such objective test or standard for intelligence. There isn't even an objective definition or criterion for what intelligence is.
Sure there are. There may not be an objective definition written in stone by the hand of God. But there are definitions and standards that are published in medical journals, studies, and textbooks. Even in our everyday life we know that there is a difference in intellegence between people. IQ test are simply an attempt (maybe well done or poorly done) to quantify this reality.
DD5:Perhaps, an IQ test is able to better test certain cognitive skills better then other tests but there is no possible way to ever maintain 100% control over other variables, such as experience acquired from the environment.
There is no doubt that there is an environmental factor when it comes to IQ testing. After all children in Africa who have suffered malnutrition will not develop cognative ability at the same pace or to the same extent as children who have had no such depravation. So that would still mean that there is a real difference in cognative ability (intellegence) caused by an environmental factor. This seems to indicate that the test do reflect a difference in intellectual ability.
DD5:Obviously, people from completely different socioeconomic backrounds with large gaps between the two will score differently on such tests.
That is the question. Are people poor and score poorly on tests because they are poor. Or are people poor and score poorly on tests becuase they are not as intellegent? It seems to me both are true. After all if someone is really dense (we all know people like this) there is a very good chance they will not be sucessful economicly. This is not a judgement of this persons value, but an example of how those who are less intellegent would both perform poorly on IQ tests and in the economy.
But they didn't stay like that. They became massively urbanized in the 20th century.