3 ms·

Make the question smaller. Why isn’t all of America equally rich? Why aren’t all neighborhoods in your city equally rich? The answers are similar: historical pa

by api 4y ago

Make the question smaller. Why isn’t all of America equally rich? Why aren’t all neighborhoods in your city equally rich? The answers are similar: historical path dependence, founder effects, compounding network effects, and fortunate or unfortunate accidents.

bumby 4y ago
Much of the article focuses on institutions. So how would you characterize the institutions in poorer America as different? How, for example, does the historical dependency path manifest itself in the institutions of poor America?
awb 4y ago
+ Nature
- bergenty 4y ago
  I don’t know if I can fully agree. India and China made up 60% of the world GDP for over 2000 years of history. Does their decline into poverty mean there was a genetic change? Both those countries are now growing at very fast rate, has there been a change again?
- api 4y ago
  It’s a factor and I think those that argue against it overshoot their case by completely dismissing it altogether. Yet to argue that it’s a large factor you have to explain all the many cases of genetically almost identical populations with vastly different outcomes across either space or time. By time I mean historically. Europe was a lot poorer than much of the Muslim world and the Orient until the enlightenment and the industrial age. Did Europeans suddenly mutate into a higher intelligence population? Russia has been in steady decline since probably 1980 or so. Their ethnic makeup has not changed to any significant degree. China exploded in the past 30 years. Probably even less genetic change there. North and South Korea from space is the most dramatic example. That has an obvious political cause but the genes are about identical. The variance in societal scale outcome just does not map well to human genetics, revealing it as a minor rather than a major factor.

3 ms·

Make the question smaller. Why isn’t all of America equally rich? Why aren’t all neighborhoods in your city equally rich? The answers are similar: historical pa

by api 4y ago

bumby 4y ago
Much of the article focuses on institutions. So how would you characterize the institutions in poorer America as different? How, for example, does the historical dependency path manifest itself in the institutions of poor America?
awb 4y ago
+ Nature
- bergenty 4y ago
  I don’t know if I can fully agree. India and China made up 60% of the world GDP for over 2000 years of history. Does their decline into poverty mean there was a genetic change? Both those countries are now growing at very fast rate, has there been a change again?
- api 4y ago
  It’s a factor and I think those that argue against it overshoot their case by completely dismissing it altogether. Yet to argue that it’s a large factor you have to explain all the many cases of genetically almost identical populations with vastly different outcomes across either space or time. By time I mean historically. Europe was a lot poorer than much of the Muslim world and the Orient until the enlightenment and the industrial age. Did Europeans suddenly mutate into a higher intelligence population? Russia has been in steady decline since probably 1980 or so. Their ethnic makeup has not changed to any significant degree. China exploded in the past 30 years. Probably even less genetic change there. North and South Korea from space is the most dramatic example. That has an obvious political cause but the genes are about identical. The variance in societal scale outcome just does not map well to human genetics, revealing it as a minor rather than a major factor.