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I think this hypothesis quickly falls apart when you consider other places other than the US and China. To take India for example, the northern parts rely more
by yedava 3y ago
I think this hypothesis quickly falls apart when you consider other places other than the US and China. To take India for example, the northern parts rely more on wheat and the southern parts on rice. One could easily make up an argument that the rice dominant south is more individualistic as it produces more economic output.
- tivert 3y ago> To take India for example, the northern parts rely more on wheat and the southern parts on rice. One could easily make up an argument that the rice dominant south is more individualistic as it produces more economic output. I think that argument would fail due to the assumption that you can infer community's bias towards individualism vs collectivism from "economic output." If you want to turn India into a counterexample, I think you'd need to use similar kinds of psychological tests across the different regions.
- toasterlovin 3y agoThe Indian subcontinent has a major confounding variable in the caste system. Different castes have lived side by side with almost no genetic mixing for nearly 2k years. It’s truly anomalous among genetic histories throughout the world.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoBangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) was/is a rice producing region, while Pakistan (formerly West Pakistan) was/is a largely wheat producing region. Is one or the other more individualistic? If the claimed hypothesis of these papers is true, did it have any impact on the development of the two regions? Bangladesh is certainly richer today.
- smallnamespace 3y agoThe rice-farming areas of southern China have been economically dominant (more often than not) since around the Song dynasty, about a millennium ago.
- kelipso 3y agoUsing economic output in that argument is absurd since collectivist China has the most economic output in the world.