4 ms·

Always worth zooming out and considering this study that relates average temperature to economic production, claiming 13C as a sweet spot https://www.nature.com

by jmkd 7y ago

Always worth zooming out and considering this study that relates average temperature to economic production, claiming 13C as a sweet spot https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725

chewxy 7y ago
Is this going to be a new Montesquieu's climatoethnic justification for racism?
- enriquto 7y ago
  What does it have to do with race? Aren't there people of every race in every climate?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    The proportions of people with brown/black skin tend to increase as you approach the equator.
    - opportune 7y ago
      It’s a pretty obvious genetic adaptation to dealing with varying levels of sunlight. You even see it in the Americas which (presumably) is based off a relatively recent, smallish founder population
jdm2212 7y ago
I believe the conventionally accepted explanation for this is Acemoglu's, and it's that GDP is an Nth-order effect of climate. Warm weather -> highly productive agriculture -> landholders become extremely wealthy -> oligarchic government -> low GDP. Think of the American North and South before the Civil War, where slavery and inequality took hold in the highly agriculturally productive South but never in the North. The North wound up poor and more egalitarian, but eventually industrialized and overtook the South. Edit: warm weather also happens to correlate with another natural resource: oil. Oil tends to produce a similar dynamic -- whoever owns the oil owns the government and badly mismanages the government for their own benefit. The exceptions prove the rule: Alaska and Norway were both established, egalitarian societies before the oil was found, in contrast with Middle Eastern petrostates, Russia and Venezuela.
- oblio 7y ago
  Counter-point : Russia.
  - jdm2212 7y ago
    > The exceptions prove the rule: Alaska and Norway were both established, egalitarian societies before the oil was found, in contrast with Middle Eastern petrostates, Russia and Venezuela.
- cambalache 7y ago
  Is Alaska a big outlier inside the US regarding equality? Because the US as a whole is nowhere near the level of Norway in terms of equality. As a matter of fact Russia has a lower Gini coefficient. Even in the Americas US is below Canada, Uruguay, Argentina among other and almost parity with Venezuela. The problem in Venezuela is that the state has been weak and ineffective. Weak != Small, you have this suffocating bureaucracy which does nothing.
  - jdm2212 7y ago
    Oil today, or fertile agricultural land 150 years ago, doesn't make government big or small. It just frees whoever controls the natural resource from accountability to others and lets them do whatever they want to do. Putin wants to run a superpower, so he pours the oil money into a bigger defense budget than Russia's GDP justifies. Maduro is (notionally) a socialist and pours the oil money into a bloated bureaucracy.

by jmkd 7y ago

chewxy 7y ago

Is this going to be a new Montesquieu's climatoethnic justification for racism?

enriquto 7y ago
What does it have to do with race? Aren't there people of every race in every climate?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  The proportions of people with brown/black skin tend to increase as you approach the equator.
  - opportune 7y ago
    It’s a pretty obvious genetic adaptation to dealing with varying levels of sunlight. You even see it in the Americas which (presumably) is based off a relatively recent, smallish founder population

jdm2212 7y ago

I believe the conventionally accepted explanation for this is Acemoglu's, and it's that GDP is an Nth-order effect of climate. Warm weather -> highly productive agriculture -> landholders become extremely wealthy -> oligarchic government -> low GDP. Think of the American North and South before the Civil War, where slavery and inequality took hold in the highly agriculturally productive South but never in the North. The North wound up poor and more egalitarian, but eventually industrialized and overtook the South. Edit: warm weather also happens to correlate with another natural resource: oil. Oil tends to produce a similar dynamic -- whoever owns the oil owns the government and badly mismanages the government for their own benefit. The exceptions prove the rule: Alaska and Norway were both established, egalitarian societies before the oil was found, in contrast with Middle Eastern petrostates, Russia and Venezuela.

oblio 7y ago
Counter-point : Russia.
- jdm2212 7y ago
  > The exceptions prove the rule: Alaska and Norway were both established, egalitarian societies before the oil was found, in contrast with Middle Eastern petrostates, Russia and Venezuela.
cambalache 7y ago
Is Alaska a big outlier inside the US regarding equality? Because the US as a whole is nowhere near the level of Norway in terms of equality. As a matter of fact Russia has a lower Gini coefficient. Even in the Americas US is below Canada, Uruguay, Argentina among other and almost parity with Venezuela. The problem in Venezuela is that the state has been weak and ineffective. Weak != Small, you have this suffocating bureaucracy which does nothing.
- jdm2212 7y ago
  Oil today, or fertile agricultural land 150 years ago, doesn't make government big or small. It just frees whoever controls the natural resource from accountability to others and lets them do whatever they want to do. Putin wants to run a superpower, so he pours the oil money into a bigger defense budget than Russia's GDP justifies. Maduro is (notionally) a socialist and pours the oil money into a bloated bureaucracy.