I don’t think I could make that point.
Successful populations–and nation–do not have as their only skillset the ability to invent things for themselves. Certainly a population with a high average intelligence does have that skillset, but they also have the ability to import innovation and knowledge and put it to use for themselves. The economically successful ones have also managed to get rid of obstructing political systems over time–they are not permanently bound by crappy governments.
Where nations containing large subsets of highly intelligent sub-populations exist in the world, what you see are pockets of intellect-dependent successes even where there might be overall economic failure. North Korea is a good example of that. They obviously have a horrible political system and are an economic failure, but they also have a highly intelligent population–intelligent enough, for example, to come up with fairly impressive military weapons including a nuclear arsenal. In parts of the former USSR, one might see similar successes either for the military or in computer science or mathematics, or whatever.
Similar markers are absent across sub-saharan nations, most of which remain in politicial turmoil to be sure, but none of which have pockets of innovation or success that are harbingers of underlying robust capability for innovation–or even transfer of outside knowledge and innovation into local expertise. They are, instead, permanently dependent on the outside world. We don’t see, for instance (despite a huge market for small arms), a sub-saharan nation take an AK47, say, and modify it with innovations to produce a new and improved version which builds upon the imported one. There’s this persistent total dependence on outside knowledge for everything from food production to infrastructure to science, almost completely devoid of local innovation or knowledge transfer to a self-sustaining degree.
NK has a superpower and nuclear-armed neighbour. This is no coincidence as to how NK has managed to make a (flawed) nuclear weapon.
And it shows clear bias to say “Yeah, well, NK is poorer than many african nations, but they have greater potential”. Other than IQ and the Wealth of Nations, which we’ve discussed to death, what are you basing that on?
Yeah, surprising to see these things in former parts of a superpower.
I’ll admit there has been a lack of innovation there. We differ on the cause.
It’s my opinion that it’s because of the historical significance of the sahara and that in modern times, it’s become a poverty trap.
It’s your opinion, it seems, that African populations either lack the intelligence or the initiative to get ahead.
The reasons I reject the latter view are because people of african descent living in wealthy nations can start businesses, develop novel concepts, or work jobs that are considered to require a high IQ. In fact, here in the UK, we are the recipients of an african brain drain as we import quite a number of doctors and nurses.
The second reason, is that I personally don’t believe that certain jobs require high IQs, or that high IQs are necessary for a nation to become wealthy.
You mean like how mobile money transfer and payment has been embraced and expanded within Kenya?
I’m sure you’ll be dismissive of such developments, but if they happened in NK you’d use it as proof of the population’s intelligence.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard it. IIRC, if it were perfectly distributed with no waste whatsoever and you were content with just letting poeple get by on fairly few calories, then you’d at least go a long way towards feeding the world. We’re self-sufficient in basic chow, though we do import a lot of specialty stuff, and also fruit when it’s out of season within the nation.
Oh, come on. South Africa’s been a robust multi-party democracy for nearly twenty years now - sure, there are problems (crime and corruption), but no worse than in any middle-income country. Namibia’s the same deal, albeit poorer. Botswana had democracy and the rule of law pretty much from Day 1 of independence. Benin transitioned to democracy, peacefully, back in the 90s - and did it in the shadow of the perpetual mess that is Nigeria.
Sure, there are plenty of bad governments in Africa - but as even sven has very capably explained, that’s largely due to the sort of geopolitical shenannigans that can wreak havoc anywhere, and often has. South America through the 1980s, much of Asia, and so on.
First, as to North Korea: of course they have had assistance from elsewhere. Every nation has. But they have the intellect depth to take that assistance and assimilate it and expand on it–their weaponry being an example.
You are correct that it’s my opinion–opinion–that sub-saharan populations lack the intellect depth to assimilate and expand on knowledge transfer from the outside world. This, in my opinion, is Africa’s greatest challenge. It does not mean that enormously bright sub-groups do not exist in African nations. It’s my opinion–opinion–that immigrants from African countries are culled from the brightest sub-populations. It is exactly a “brain drain,” detrimental to countries that lose the brains because since intelligence has such a large hereditary component, any population losing its most intelligent genes suffers.
I’m always delighted to see successful immigrants, but I don’t get confused thinking that an immigrant population is necessarily a cross-section of what was left behind. It’s my opinion–opinion–that even within a given population (white immigrants to the Americas, e.g.), more intelligent sub-population groups migrated from the countryside to the cities, for example.
Personally I suspect that if Zimbabwe were bordered by China, and the two countries had diplomatic ties, then Mugabe would also have a crap bomb to his name. But obviously this is just speculation.
I think we’ve already made good progress in this discussion.
I conceded that African nations have under-delivered on the kind of innovation that might help lift them out of poverty. And now you’ve conceded that there exist, within african populations enormously bright “sub-groups”.
I still wonder where you sit with my main point about Africa being a poverty trap. It’s my position that for whatever historical reasons, SS Africa is a pretty isolated, poor region. In such a region, a developing nation walks a path with a lot more snakes than ladders. It’s quite possible for an african government to do all the right things but still experience sluggish growth.
Me neither. I’m not saying it’s true, I’m saying I’ve heard it stated before. I aim to never speak inaccurately, though I don’t always succeed. But the U.S. certainly cn fed itself is necessary.
First there is a difference between “starving” and “hungry”. Secondly the problem is mainly one of distribution and as most of the world develop capitalist economies and stable governmental forms starvation will in general be reduced.
Europeans did well in South Africa and Zimbabwe in terms of developing resources and putting in infrastructure, to give two examples.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria are examples of countries with enormous natural resources, utterly unable to convert those natural resources into stable economies with widespread infrastructure. Consider the difference between what Saudi Arabia has done with its oil reserves versus Nigeria.
Which ss African government has “done all the right things” but still crapped out? Some of them have been more stable than others, but taken as a whole the failure rate is staggering and the lack of internal development is sobering. There isn’t even any good example of effective knowledge transfer…even the countries with rich natural resources are still completely dependent upon outside knowledge.
A modern society requires a fairly good brain bench–a broad depth of competence and intellect–to perform the range of jobs required to be self-sufficient and to prosper. Without that, it’s at the mercy of those who would exploit it but who have no interest in the country itself.
Before 1960, Africans in most countries were severely restricted in their educational opportunities. When most countries hit independence, they had only a handful of college-educated potential leaders. I think Niger had less than 10 bachelor’s degree holders in the entire country at the time of independence.
Indeed, the effect becomes apparent when you look at countries colonized by different people. The British colonization effort emphasized local markets and created a bit of a local bureaucracy. Today, former British colonies (even ones like Ghana without large foreign populations) do much, much better than their French-colonized counterparts. Given the Belgium outright pillaged the Congo, is it really surprising they didn’t have a great start? You can’t build a country out of thin air, but because Europe held on to absolute power in their colonies even as the system crumbled around them (instead of creating local political systems, etc. that would have eased the transition) that is what Africa was forced to do.
This was only a couple generations ago. Is it surprising that good leadership and competent bureaucrats didn’t materialize out of thin air? That said, most countries have made enormous strides in education since independence. Unfortunately, the systems of corruption that developed in early independence are going to take some time to overcome.
Remember, it was only in the 1940s that Europe looked like a nightmare. It was war-torn, ruled by dictators, seething with genocide, overrun with refugees, and full of famine and disease. You know all those aid organizations that run refugee camps, like Oxfam? Well, a lot of them got their start in Europe providing relief in the aftermath of WWII. China, or course, is the new up and comer. In the 1960s the place was full of bands of random schoolchildren shooting each other in the street as peasants ate tree bark and tiptoed around the bodies they were too weak to bury. Development takes time, and it’s ridiculous to give up on Africa already.
Absolutely – a lot can get done when you have a developed nation investing in a developing one. This is why I don’t personally see colonialism as all bad (although see below), and also I think China’s interest in the region will produce the kind of long-term changes that aid cannot do.
Saudi Arabia is the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, and it has been fortunate enough to be relatively peaceful for some time, so it’s a bit of an extreme example.
Colonialism has caused some problems for Nigeria, in that it is split right down the middle between muslim and christian regions. The current policy they have is that each term a leader from the other religious group must be the next leader. This kind of poor compromise is common in Africa.
It should also be said that for very poor countries, discovering oil is not the panacea some imagine it to be. If you exclude Saudi Arabia, you see a pattern of poor countries discovering oil and then becoming war zones or experiencing runaway inflation. This is no coincidence.
Valuable natural resources can fund rebellions and they pretty much destroy the rest of the export market by raising the currency’s value.