3 ms·

Is it? A big chunk of the "developing world" is (generally) Christian—pretty much all of the Americas, big chunks of Africa. The Philippines. Russia and some of

by asark 7y ago

Is it? A big chunk of the "developing world" is (generally) Christian—pretty much all of the Americas, big chunks of Africa. The Philippines. Russia and some of the former Soviet bloc states. Meanwhile everyone agrees Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the "developed" states and I don't think it's fair to characterize them as Christian. I prefer to just shorthand this as "OECD" versus "non-OECD" which manages to just about cover all the states everyone actually means when they use "Western" (including tons of countries that aren't Western at all) or "developed", though the latter's a decent enough term IMO. "Western" is especially silly, of course, for a bunch of reasons, including that pretty much all the "original" Western states were themselves at some point "Westernized"—rolled over by Generic European-ish Capitalist "Culture", erasing most of what was there before, and absorbing and exporting those elements that could be sold to others (those parts becoming "Western")

perl4ever 7y ago
"Meanwhile everyone agrees Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the "developed" states and I don't think it's fair to characterize them as Christian." This is just a nitpick as I agree with your overall point, but South Korea isn't agreed by everyone to be a developed country. In fact, they are right on the cusp as evidenced by the fact that some investment funds consider them developing and some consider them developed. I almost think there should be a classification for the US, Japan, and the UK, and another for "everyone else". If you look at the number of medium to smallish companies that have access to public stock markets, there is a huge difference between those three countries and everywhere else. Something is fundamentally different about their economies. And I've never read where someone declares this a mystery worthy of investigation and tries to explain it.

by asark 7y ago

perl4ever 7y ago

"Meanwhile everyone agrees Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the "developed" states and I don't think it's fair to characterize them as Christian." This is just a nitpick as I agree with your overall point, but South Korea isn't agreed by everyone to be a developed country. In fact, they are right on the cusp as evidenced by the fact that some investment funds consider them developing and some consider them developed. I almost think there should be a classification for the US, Japan, and the UK, and another for "everyone else". If you look at the number of medium to smallish companies that have access to public stock markets, there is a huge difference between those three countries and everywhere else. Something is fundamentally different about their economies. And I've never read where someone declares this a mystery worthy of investigation and tries to explain it.