6 ms·

Why Warm Climates Tend to Create Poor Economies

25 points by rntn 2y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Well this article is a bit shit. In that past India, China, Mali were massive economies and those didn't happen overnight. They took millenia and the weather stayed warm throughout that time. As always it is often technology which creates wealth and whoever has the "current" tech usually shoots up for a few centuries and then the cycle repeats itself.
delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
This is a deeply imperialist, Euro/Anglo-centric viewpoint, similar to the points in 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. And this is despite the author being of Indian origin. There are so many flaws in his argument, and not least because the author looks only at the present. He conveniently overlooks the fact that Europe was—for lack of a better word—a broken collection of barbarian states for the majority of civilisation beginning at 3500 BCE. Only during the Greek and Roman empires from about 500 BCE to about 400 CE, and after the Renaissance at about 1450 CE—did Europe gain any sort of prominence. And funnily enough just before the Renaissance, the Black Death ripped through most of Europe because it was an unsanitary hell hole, with sewage and manure openly flowing at the surface level, and all Greco-Roman engineering mostly forgotten or left to rot. Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indo-Gangetic plains, and the Yangtze are all in decidedly warmer climes than much of Europe, and the civilisations they birthed still endure. In cold climates you can do fuck all during winter, and frankly, most of the year. Cash crops don't grow at all. All the water is frozen solid for months on end. There is hardly any sunlight. This means no plants. No plants means no animals. No plants and animals means no food. There's a reason why Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska, much of Canada, Siberia, the Tibetan plateau, and Patagonia remain completely undeveloped. Many tropical and sub-tropical countries were extremely wealthy until at least the 1600s. India was amongst the richest countries in the world until the British colonised it, squeezed every last drop out of it, and then dropped it like a hot potato once Britain itself was nearly bankrupted and its infrastructure in smithereens following WW2 (and sliced it in half for good measure, setting the stage for an infinite casus belli between the Islamic Pakistan and the secular India). Belgium did something similar in the Congo, and there's probably a cathedral full of Congolese hands and legs somewhere in Brussels. The early American colonists arrived to see most of the native Americans ravaged by smallpox and the plague, foreign diseases the latter had no immunity to. They saw open land for the taking, and called it manifest destiny in their race from Virginia to California and Oregon. They sequestered the remaining native Americans (who to this date are misnamed as 'Indians', another facet to the enduring racism and prejudice in the US) into 'reservations' and 'nations'. Likewise for Canada. In central and south America the violently evangelical Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese took advantage of the fractious rivalries, and picked them off one-by-one usually allying with one empire against another, rinse and repeat—from the Aztecs, Maya, and Toltec to the Inca. The large majority of modern European countries have built their current wealth on the backs (and blood) of exploited and colonised peoples from Central and South America, to almost all of Africa and the Middle East, to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. In a just world, Spain, Portugal, the UK, France, the US, and the Benelux countries would collectively be forced to pay reparations amounting to about five to ten trillion euros/pounds/dollars per annum to their ex-colonies, slaves, and exploited peoples until the latter returned to a semblance of development with everyone above the poverty line, and with reliable electricity, sanitation, food supply, housing, and Internet access.
- arresin 2y ago
  Why would it bother you enough to write this essay if you know it’s not true?
  - throw836273 2y ago
    I'm glad he wrote the comment to fight misinformation.
  - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
    It bothers me when people find arguments to prove the current state of development of the Western world and the lack of development of everywhere else are inevitable, regardless of reason. It almost always leads to a slippery slope that descends into scientific and then popular racism, ending with 'you are from X region/culture, you don't deserve to become developed anyway'. And the article the author is citing makes these sorts of claims.
- pknomad 2y ago
  Your argument - "[t]his is a deeply imperialist, Euro/Anglo-centric viewpoint" - is deeply lazy. You should be easily rebut the their points if the article is bad. If anything - your arguments actually reinforce the article's point of view because resource heavy areas get pilfered by others and the victors often place or leave extractive institutions in these areas, thus leading to poor economies. Countries that have winters have incentives to colonize resource-rich areas for the reasons you cite. If these resource rich areas have the advantage of having resources... then why is it that these areas are often colonized instead of the other way around? Also - the article presents these arguments because they're simply sourcing arguments from Daron Acemoglu, who is a labor economist from MIT. Therefore, it will be written from a developmental economics point of view, not from political economics. >In a just world, Spain, Portugal, the UK, France, the US, and the Benelux countries would collectively be forced to pay reparations amounting to about five to ten trillion euros/pounds/dollars per annum to their ex-colonies, slaves, and exploited peoples until the latter returned to a semblance of development with everyone above the poverty line, and with reliable electricity, sanitation, food supply, housing, and Internet access. You're not wrong for wanting reparations but this argument has nothing to do with the article at hand.
codeddesign 2y ago
There is no simple answer here…it’s a mix of scenarios: migration, resources, cultures, historical needs, and govt policies, and corruption. The US population expanded from the North East where the Industrial Revolution began. Economic jobs boomed and so did wealth. California created a tech boom, and Texas created an oil boom. While southern and middle states lack technology, industry, precious metals. Major European countries (cold) joined forces economically to prevent ruin, while middle eastern countries (warm) face USSR style corruption. In Russia, most of the countries resources are reverted to Moscow or St Petersburg. While warmer AND colder areas of the country lack basic funding/upkeep. South Africa has the highest GDP in Africa primarily due to historical colonialism stabilizing the area and turning it into a major port. While surrounding countries are 1/10th the GDP due to govt policies and corruption. The east side of Australia is heavily built up compared to the rest of the country. This is due to port access and farmland while the west coast is much more dry and rocky. Obviously this isn’t exhaustive, but serves the point. There is no single answer and “warm is poor” only applies to VERY select regions.
nobodyandproud 2y ago
I don't agree with this article at all. It's the wrong lens. Warm climates may have more resources, but the wealth concentration is somewhat artificial; nor that cold climates had difficulties in centralizing power. Instead, the simpler and more accurate narrative is that cold climate countries are more resource starved, therefore have more incentive to plunder the resource-rich nations. The easiest nations to plunder are the technically lagging nations. And what lead to a technology-savvy culture in the recent past? War, with the occasional dose of peace.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  Yes, the Irish plundered the globe with their vast colonial empire to acquire their wealth.
  - nobodyandproud 2y ago
    Replace “Irish” with “British” and you have a winner.
yen223 2y ago
Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore - a tropical nation - famously claimed that air conditioning was one of the most important inventions, as it "changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics". And I am inclined to agree. As a person who grew up in a hot tropical country and is now living in a cool temperate one, I found it much easier to do things in a cooler climate than in a warmer one. This is anecdotal of course. Take it for what it is, just my personal experience.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
namaria 2y ago
Taking snapshots of vastly complex systems and trying to find an explanation as to why it is configured a certain way in the snapshot is a fool's errand.

25 points by rntn 2y ago

Well this article is a bit shit. In that past India, China, Mali were massive economies and those didn't happen overnight. They took millenia and the weather stayed warm throughout that time. As always it is often technology which creates wealth and whoever has the "current" tech usually shoots up for a few centuries and then the cycle repeats itself.

delta_p_delta_x 2y ago

This is a deeply imperialist, Euro/Anglo-centric viewpoint, similar to the points in 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. And this is despite the author being of Indian origin. There are so many flaws in his argument, and not least because the author looks only at the present. He conveniently overlooks the fact that Europe was—for lack of a better word—a broken collection of barbarian states for the majority of civilisation beginning at 3500 BCE. Only during the Greek and Roman empires from about 500 BCE to about 400 CE, and after the Renaissance at about 1450 CE—did Europe gain any sort of prominence. And funnily enough just before the Renaissance, the Black Death ripped through most of Europe because it was an unsanitary hell hole, with sewage and manure openly flowing at the surface level, and all Greco-Roman engineering mostly forgotten or left to rot. Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indo-Gangetic plains, and the Yangtze are all in decidedly warmer climes than much of Europe, and the civilisations they birthed still endure. In cold climates you can do fuck all during winter, and frankly, most of the year. Cash crops don't grow at all. All the water is frozen solid for months on end. There is hardly any sunlight. This means no plants. No plants means no animals. No plants and animals means no food. There's a reason why Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska, much of Canada, Siberia, the Tibetan plateau, and Patagonia remain completely undeveloped. Many tropical and sub-tropical countries were extremely wealthy until at least the 1600s. India was amongst the richest countries in the world until the British colonised it, squeezed every last drop out of it, and then dropped it like a hot potato once Britain itself was nearly bankrupted and its infrastructure in smithereens following WW2 (and sliced it in half for good measure, setting the stage for an infinite casus belli between the Islamic Pakistan and the secular India). Belgium did something similar in the Congo, and there's probably a cathedral full of Congolese hands and legs somewhere in Brussels. The early American colonists arrived to see most of the native Americans ravaged by smallpox and the plague, foreign diseases the latter had no immunity to. They saw open land for the taking, and called it manifest destiny in their race from Virginia to California and Oregon. They sequestered the remaining native Americans (who to this date are misnamed as 'Indians', another facet to the enduring racism and prejudice in the US) into 'reservations' and 'nations'. Likewise for Canada. In central and south America the violently evangelical Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese took advantage of the fractious rivalries, and picked them off one-by-one usually allying with one empire against another, rinse and repeat—from the Aztecs, Maya, and Toltec to the Inca. The large majority of modern European countries have built their current wealth on the backs (and blood) of exploited and colonised peoples from Central and South America, to almost all of Africa and the Middle East, to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. In a just world, Spain, Portugal, the UK, France, the US, and the Benelux countries would collectively be forced to pay reparations amounting to about five to ten trillion euros/pounds/dollars per annum to their ex-colonies, slaves, and exploited peoples until the latter returned to a semblance of development with everyone above the poverty line, and with reliable electricity, sanitation, food supply, housing, and Internet access.

arresin 2y ago
Why would it bother you enough to write this essay if you know it’s not true?
- throw836273 2y ago
  I'm glad he wrote the comment to fight misinformation.
- delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
  It bothers me when people find arguments to prove the current state of development of the Western world and the lack of development of everywhere else are inevitable, regardless of reason. It almost always leads to a slippery slope that descends into scientific and then popular racism, ending with 'you are from X region/culture, you don't deserve to become developed anyway'. And the article the author is citing makes these sorts of claims.
pknomad 2y ago
Your argument - "[t]his is a deeply imperialist, Euro/Anglo-centric viewpoint" - is deeply lazy. You should be easily rebut the their points if the article is bad. If anything - your arguments actually reinforce the article's point of view because resource heavy areas get pilfered by others and the victors often place or leave extractive institutions in these areas, thus leading to poor economies. Countries that have winters have incentives to colonize resource-rich areas for the reasons you cite. If these resource rich areas have the advantage of having resources... then why is it that these areas are often colonized instead of the other way around? Also - the article presents these arguments because they're simply sourcing arguments from Daron Acemoglu, who is a labor economist from MIT. Therefore, it will be written from a developmental economics point of view, not from political economics. >In a just world, Spain, Portugal, the UK, France, the US, and the Benelux countries would collectively be forced to pay reparations amounting to about five to ten trillion euros/pounds/dollars per annum to their ex-colonies, slaves, and exploited peoples until the latter returned to a semblance of development with everyone above the poverty line, and with reliable electricity, sanitation, food supply, housing, and Internet access. You're not wrong for wanting reparations but this argument has nothing to do with the article at hand.

codeddesign 2y ago

There is no simple answer here…it’s a mix of scenarios: migration, resources, cultures, historical needs, and govt policies, and corruption. The US population expanded from the North East where the Industrial Revolution began. Economic jobs boomed and so did wealth. California created a tech boom, and Texas created an oil boom. While southern and middle states lack technology, industry, precious metals. Major European countries (cold) joined forces economically to prevent ruin, while middle eastern countries (warm) face USSR style corruption. In Russia, most of the countries resources are reverted to Moscow or St Petersburg. While warmer AND colder areas of the country lack basic funding/upkeep. South Africa has the highest GDP in Africa primarily due to historical colonialism stabilizing the area and turning it into a major port. While surrounding countries are 1/10th the GDP due to govt policies and corruption. The east side of Australia is heavily built up compared to the rest of the country. This is due to port access and farmland while the west coast is much more dry and rocky. Obviously this isn’t exhaustive, but serves the point. There is no single answer and “warm is poor” only applies to VERY select regions.

nobodyandproud 2y ago

I don't agree with this article at all. It's the wrong lens. Warm climates may have more resources, but the wealth concentration is somewhat artificial; nor that cold climates had difficulties in centralizing power. Instead, the simpler and more accurate narrative is that cold climate countries are more resource starved, therefore have more incentive to plunder the resource-rich nations. The easiest nations to plunder are the technically lagging nations. And what lead to a technology-savvy culture in the recent past? War, with the occasional dose of peace.

nitwit005 2y ago
Yes, the Irish plundered the globe with their vast colonial empire to acquire their wealth.
- nobodyandproud 2y ago
  Replace “Irish” with “British” and you have a winner.

yen223 2y ago

Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore - a tropical nation - famously claimed that air conditioning was one of the most important inventions, as it "changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics". And I am inclined to agree. As a person who grew up in a hot tropical country and is now living in a cool temperate one, I found it much easier to do things in a cooler climate than in a warmer one. This is anecdotal of course. Take it for what it is, just my personal experience.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

namaria 2y ago

Taking snapshots of vastly complex systems and trying to find an explanation as to why it is configured a certain way in the snapshot is a fool's errand.