4 ms·

Why warm countries are poorer

56 points by baristaGeek 1y ago

TheCleric 1y ago
I see a lot of correlation but not a lot of causation.
- DaveZale 1y ago
  Agree, there is some truth in these arguments, but, historically speaking, social, religious, legal frameworks that evolved in northern climes over a few thousand years may play important roles in economic success. And it was never a completely linear upward progression, with significant setbacks for sometimes long periods, and nothing about the future is guaranteed. Last night I watched several Rick Steves episodes about European art, and how it reflected society and culture over time. The Greeks set up the rationality in government, the Romans excelled at conquest and building infrastructure, while providing a good life, for centuries, and that progressed to other systems as Rome fell. So northern cultures have their ups and downs, but the past yields plenty of lesson in terms of engineering of government and infrastructure
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    > historically speaking, social, religious, legal frameworks that evolved in northern climes over a few thousand years may play important roles in economic success. Those frameworks have evolved elsewhere in the world independently as well in a similar fashion. What you’re looking at is a specific time in history where due to a variety of reasons, some places are doing well relative to others. If you look at history across 2000 years, you’ll find that different parts of the world were doing better at different times.
- tomalbrc 1y ago
  The "correlation" listed seems very odd: > Diseases: > The warmer the country is, the poorer it is, and the unhealthier it is.
bbor 1y ago
This is an absurd article, I’m sorry. To accept the explanation of “brown people are just worse” as possible, but to throw out “colonialism shaped the modern world” because Australia is rich is so clearly biased that it reads like a strawman. Also, are they aware that Australia is quite hot…? Putting that huge issue aside for more fundamental ones: certainly climate impacts culture in the aggregate to some extent, but the overall framing here is way too overconfident. There’s about a million confounding variables when assessing different societies over large time scales, the largest of which are A) technology and B) to what extent GDP is even a primary goal. Asking if heat makes societies poorer is like asking if rivers make societies richer: it depends!
- phyzix5761 1y ago
  I think I missed it but where do they say "brown people are just worse"?
  - mzajc 1y ago
    They hint at it: > 5. Race > This theory is extremely contested, and I haven’t independently assessed it, so I won’t go into any detail, but for sake of completeness we must add the hypothesis that race also has influence in economic development. I might eventually make an independent assessment of the claim. If you haven't "independently assessed" it and have zero details to add, please leave it out until you do!
    - happytoexplain 1y ago
      Why? There's no reason to inject hostility like this. It's not as if the author said, "I suspect brown people are stupid, but I won't make any formal claims until I perform an assessment."
      - bbor 1y ago
        Yeah, I'm open to the idea that women are made for the kitchen and are too stupid to participate in public life. You should keep an open mind! You see the problem here?
paulorlando 1y ago
This being a snapshot in time, how would the claim change if we looked at the past? Do the explanations fade if you look back in history at empires in hot parts of the world, like the Egyptian, Mauryan, Persian, Akkadian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Songhain, Incan, Aztec, Mayan...
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  I think the fact that the majority of the 'rich' nations population consisting of Europe and North America (Japan/SK/AU/NZ are a smaller population base) speaks to this. You could just ask why those 2 regions are so rich right now and the answer i think has much to do with military dominance starting a few hundred years back. The climate line seems to be artificially pushed by "Look the southern hemisphere below latitude -40 is as wealthy as europe/NA above latitude 40". There's literally <2million people below latitude -40... (that's the top of Tasmania, part of NZ and patagonia for reference) How can they suggest what they are suggesting without consideration of this? As in the data of "oh look southern hemisphere is rich near the poles too" is just based on a handful of people living there.
  - abdullahkhalids 1y ago
    Don't worry. In 20 years, people with no knowledge of history will be writing articles asking why are the richest countries those with some random fact that unites China and India. Human societies, viewed as systems, have changes occurring over decades and centuries. Taking short snapshots will fool you about the nature of these systems.
    - PessimalDecimal 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - tptacek 1y ago
        There is no such thing as national average IQ. There are things that make claims about average IQs, but they're based on fraudulent data (the data basically has to be fraudulent, because nobody has ever conducted a global national survey of average IQ).
FridayoLeary 1y ago
what i was told in school iirc was a combination of climate plus europe being far more populated and dynamic. The environment and competition forced them to innovate much more and there was much more cultural exchange going on. The next obvious step was expanding the search for resources etc etc. It's obvious that the roman empire contributed a huge amount towards the process of European progress. Come to think of it Europe has kind of been dominant over the middle east since Alexander the great.
- crooked-v 1y ago
  And of course there's the role there of the Mediterranean in massively enabling trade between places of various resources and needs, while directly connecting to global oceans on top of that.
  - foogazi 1y ago
    Yes, weird to consider Europe without the Mediterranean influence
- woooooo 1y ago
  Europe spent like a thousand years losing Christian territory to the Arabs/Turks, at one point they pushed from Spain into France. Istanbul is called Istanbul and not Constantinople, no Greek royalty in Egypt, etc etc. From the fall of Rome until colonization and industrialization got rolling they were definitely not dominant.
reese_john 1y ago
Lee Kuan Yew on what made Singapore successful: “Air conditioning. … It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”
- lezojeda 1y ago
  [dead]
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  Popular joke here in Brazil: Why don't we have mafias? Too hot to wear suits.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Is it too hot to wear Arab-style robes? (I'm not saying that those are a Mafia hallmark, but I do wonder whether the robes would make sense in Brazil. As far as I'm aware they are the gold standard of heat-adapted clothing. They probably don't do much about humidity.)
    - sdeer 1y ago
      I am from eastern India, not Brazil. It is definitely too humid to wear robes. Arabia is dry and hot, very different from humid and hot.
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        Really? Here's an image of what I take to be some Indian clothing: https://www.lerevecraze.com/product/mep14377/ https://www.lerevecraze.com/product/mep14377/ And here's some Arab clothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dishdasha.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dishdasha.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb#/media/File:Sheikh_Mohammed_Bin_Rashid_and_Mohammad_Al_Gergawi_during_World_Government_Summit.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb#/media/File:Sheikh_Moham... They don't look very different, to me. I pulled this from a Bangladeshi newspaper's website: https://cdn.bd-pratidin.com/public/news_images/2025/09/29/1759124098-9bf4989c13221da464270f151d4201b2.jpg https://cdn.bd-pratidin.com/public/news_images/2025/09/29/17...
cies 1y ago
I have a theory not listed here: harsh winters make a people calculative (and calculative people make more money). If you can survive all year sleeping under a tree, you eventually end up with a different gene pool than in a place where you need to calculate how much grain you need to store for winter in order to feed you family. Harsh winters kill people that cannot plan ahead. This, over time, changes the gene pool and the attitude toward planning.
- dayjaby 1y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted. Alexander von Humboldt did a similar statement in his "Buch der Begegnungen" where he compares and finds cultures from tropical areas to be more "lazy" as all the fruits just grow on their own without any human involved.
  - foogazi 1y ago
    For small settlements sure but not for civilizations: both Aztec and Incas had to invent ways to increase farm output and were still beholden to crops North American cultures in harsher conditions were nomadic herders
- d_sem 1y ago
  You're over indexing on the genetics impacts of these things over the cultural impacts.
- greazy 1y ago
  It sounds like you haven't lived in the tropics. The heat exerts a different force than cold winters. Sure there's plenty of water and food (if you can find it), but where and how you sleep matters. For example in a rain forest you never sleep under a tree because they will randomly fall on you. Weather can be chaotic and highly destructive and like winters, cyclone season will hit hard. Rain all the time sounds lovely until it rots everything. Food expires far quicker. The tropics also gave rise to the best sea faring people; the polynesians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation The gene pool comment is ignorance combined with misinformation. Our ancestors interbred with a number of hominins across the world and then with each other. Especially across asia-europe, everyone banged each other and other hominins. To be honest your comment annoyed me a tad because I lived in the tropics and loved it. Wish I could go back. Wish the tropics had more jobs for me. Unfortunately my government doesn't spend enough.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lawrencechen 1y ago
Related question I've been asking my friends: if you were forced to get rid of air conditioning or democracy, which would you choose?
- sebmellen 1y ago
  In favor of what form of government?
aster0id 1y ago
So the solution to all of the world's problems is to move everyone to the Arctic/Antarctic regions! Got it
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Arubis 1y ago
Malaria. Next question.
jvilalta 1y ago
This was discussed in at least 3 books that I remember. Guns, getms and steel, why nations fail and the wealth and poverty of nations.
hopelite 1y ago
This is not a new theory at all and it’s also nonsense. Case in point; during the last glacial period when the temperature of Africa was similar to Europe today there was no magical climate based success in Africa. Another case in point, Rome and Greece were very successful and in hot climates while the people north them were not nearly as successful. Another case in point; Indian civilizations and the Bijang civilization among others, all in hot jungle climates. The Mayans, the Aztecs, etc. It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same. Its just moved on from magic dirt rationalization due to the cultural perspective of the early 20th century, to note adapted magic climate rationalization nonsense. Bonus case in point; the Hispanics that conquered the middle and southern Americas didn’t have any problem being not poor in hot and tropical climates, especially when you exclude the non-Hispanic people of those regions.
- foogazi 1y ago
  > Indian civilizations and the Bijang civilization among others, all in hot jungle climates. The Mayans, the Aztecs, etc. Agreed > It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same. You took a strange turn from acknowledging warm climate great civilizations to then implying people from warm climates lack abilities to form great civilizations
- seec 1y ago
  Yes it is particularly stupid because there are European people doing way better than the natives in many of those hot countries. The argument is always that the bad white people oppress the natives but at some point, there are patterns that can't be ignored. Many places that the colons were left for the natives to run went to shit also, so clearly, it's not just about the climate. The amount of bullshit people can say for bullshit political correctness virtue signaling is absolutely insane.
black_13 1y ago
[dead]
moltar 1y ago
My additional theory on top of that was that in warm countries nature often provides free food. Don’t need to hustle. Don’t need to hustle to create shelter also. So the environment sort of discourages any extra effort.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  Good point, plus what if some cultures evolved to tolerate heat or cold more so than others. With different cultures having different numbers of eons available you would expect quite a bit of dissimilarity. About as much dissimilarity as the extremes of climate found in the places settled for long-term habitation. At the same time there could also be some with natural flexibility to adapt to more extremes than others, realistically outside the realm of one extreme or another dominating, but instead for some the ability to adapt is what's extreme enough to be uncommon. Sometimes maybe even beyond the range of both cold lovers and warm lovers combined.

56 points by baristaGeek 1y ago

TheCleric 1y ago

I see a lot of correlation but not a lot of causation.

DaveZale 1y ago
Agree, there is some truth in these arguments, but, historically speaking, social, religious, legal frameworks that evolved in northern climes over a few thousand years may play important roles in economic success. And it was never a completely linear upward progression, with significant setbacks for sometimes long periods, and nothing about the future is guaranteed. Last night I watched several Rick Steves episodes about European art, and how it reflected society and culture over time. The Greeks set up the rationality in government, the Romans excelled at conquest and building infrastructure, while providing a good life, for centuries, and that progressed to other systems as Rome fell. So northern cultures have their ups and downs, but the past yields plenty of lesson in terms of engineering of government and infrastructure
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  > historically speaking, social, religious, legal frameworks that evolved in northern climes over a few thousand years may play important roles in economic success. Those frameworks have evolved elsewhere in the world independently as well in a similar fashion. What you’re looking at is a specific time in history where due to a variety of reasons, some places are doing well relative to others. If you look at history across 2000 years, you’ll find that different parts of the world were doing better at different times.
tomalbrc 1y ago
The "correlation" listed seems very odd: > Diseases: > The warmer the country is, the poorer it is, and the unhealthier it is.

bbor 1y ago

This is an absurd article, I’m sorry. To accept the explanation of “brown people are just worse” as possible, but to throw out “colonialism shaped the modern world” because Australia is rich is so clearly biased that it reads like a strawman. Also, are they aware that Australia is quite hot…? Putting that huge issue aside for more fundamental ones: certainly climate impacts culture in the aggregate to some extent, but the overall framing here is way too overconfident. There’s about a million confounding variables when assessing different societies over large time scales, the largest of which are A) technology and B) to what extent GDP is even a primary goal. Asking if heat makes societies poorer is like asking if rivers make societies richer: it depends!

phyzix5761 1y ago
I think I missed it but where do they say "brown people are just worse"?
- mzajc 1y ago
  They hint at it: > 5. Race > This theory is extremely contested, and I haven’t independently assessed it, so I won’t go into any detail, but for sake of completeness we must add the hypothesis that race also has influence in economic development. I might eventually make an independent assessment of the claim. If you haven't "independently assessed" it and have zero details to add, please leave it out until you do!
  - happytoexplain 1y ago
    Why? There's no reason to inject hostility like this. It's not as if the author said, "I suspect brown people are stupid, but I won't make any formal claims until I perform an assessment."
    - bbor 1y ago
      Yeah, I'm open to the idea that women are made for the kitchen and are too stupid to participate in public life. You should keep an open mind! You see the problem here?

paulorlando 1y ago

This being a snapshot in time, how would the claim change if we looked at the past? Do the explanations fade if you look back in history at empires in hot parts of the world, like the Egyptian, Mauryan, Persian, Akkadian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Songhain, Incan, Aztec, Mayan...

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
I think the fact that the majority of the 'rich' nations population consisting of Europe and North America (Japan/SK/AU/NZ are a smaller population base) speaks to this. You could just ask why those 2 regions are so rich right now and the answer i think has much to do with military dominance starting a few hundred years back. The climate line seems to be artificially pushed by "Look the southern hemisphere below latitude -40 is as wealthy as europe/NA above latitude 40". There's literally <2million people below latitude -40... (that's the top of Tasmania, part of NZ and patagonia for reference) How can they suggest what they are suggesting without consideration of this? As in the data of "oh look southern hemisphere is rich near the poles too" is just based on a handful of people living there.
- abdullahkhalids 1y ago
  Don't worry. In 20 years, people with no knowledge of history will be writing articles asking why are the richest countries those with some random fact that unites China and India. Human societies, viewed as systems, have changes occurring over decades and centuries. Taking short snapshots will fool you about the nature of these systems.
  - PessimalDecimal 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 1y ago
      There is no such thing as national average IQ. There are things that make claims about average IQs, but they're based on fraudulent data (the data basically has to be fraudulent, because nobody has ever conducted a global national survey of average IQ).

FridayoLeary 1y ago

what i was told in school iirc was a combination of climate plus europe being far more populated and dynamic. The environment and competition forced them to innovate much more and there was much more cultural exchange going on. The next obvious step was expanding the search for resources etc etc. It's obvious that the roman empire contributed a huge amount towards the process of European progress. Come to think of it Europe has kind of been dominant over the middle east since Alexander the great.

crooked-v 1y ago
And of course there's the role there of the Mediterranean in massively enabling trade between places of various resources and needs, while directly connecting to global oceans on top of that.
- foogazi 1y ago
  Yes, weird to consider Europe without the Mediterranean influence
woooooo 1y ago
Europe spent like a thousand years losing Christian territory to the Arabs/Turks, at one point they pushed from Spain into France. Istanbul is called Istanbul and not Constantinople, no Greek royalty in Egypt, etc etc. From the fall of Rome until colonization and industrialization got rolling they were definitely not dominant.

reese_john 1y ago

Lee Kuan Yew on what made Singapore successful: “Air conditioning. … It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”

lezojeda 1y ago
[dead]
matheusmoreira 1y ago
Popular joke here in Brazil: Why don't we have mafias? Too hot to wear suits.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Is it too hot to wear Arab-style robes? (I'm not saying that those are a Mafia hallmark, but I do wonder whether the robes would make sense in Brazil. As far as I'm aware they are the gold standard of heat-adapted clothing. They probably don't do much about humidity.)
  - sdeer 1y ago
    I am from eastern India, not Brazil. It is definitely too humid to wear robes. Arabia is dry and hot, very different from humid and hot.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      Really? Here's an image of what I take to be some Indian clothing: https://www.lerevecraze.com/product/mep14377/ https://www.lerevecraze.com/product/mep14377/ And here's some Arab clothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dishdasha.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dishdasha.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb#/media/File:Sheikh_Mohammed_Bin_Rashid_and_Mohammad_Al_Gergawi_during_World_Government_Summit.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb#/media/File:Sheikh_Moham... They don't look very different, to me. I pulled this from a Bangladeshi newspaper's website: https://cdn.bd-pratidin.com/public/news_images/2025/09/29/1759124098-9bf4989c13221da464270f151d4201b2.jpg https://cdn.bd-pratidin.com/public/news_images/2025/09/29/17...

cies 1y ago

I have a theory not listed here: harsh winters make a people calculative (and calculative people make more money). If you can survive all year sleeping under a tree, you eventually end up with a different gene pool than in a place where you need to calculate how much grain you need to store for winter in order to feed you family. Harsh winters kill people that cannot plan ahead. This, over time, changes the gene pool and the attitude toward planning.

dayjaby 1y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted. Alexander von Humboldt did a similar statement in his "Buch der Begegnungen" where he compares and finds cultures from tropical areas to be more "lazy" as all the fruits just grow on their own without any human involved.
- foogazi 1y ago
  For small settlements sure but not for civilizations: both Aztec and Incas had to invent ways to increase farm output and were still beholden to crops North American cultures in harsher conditions were nomadic herders
d_sem 1y ago
You're over indexing on the genetics impacts of these things over the cultural impacts.
greazy 1y ago
It sounds like you haven't lived in the tropics. The heat exerts a different force than cold winters. Sure there's plenty of water and food (if you can find it), but where and how you sleep matters. For example in a rain forest you never sleep under a tree because they will randomly fall on you. Weather can be chaotic and highly destructive and like winters, cyclone season will hit hard. Rain all the time sounds lovely until it rots everything. Food expires far quicker. The tropics also gave rise to the best sea faring people; the polynesians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation The gene pool comment is ignorance combined with misinformation. Our ancestors interbred with a number of hominins across the world and then with each other. Especially across asia-europe, everyone banged each other and other hominins. To be honest your comment annoyed me a tad because I lived in the tropics and loved it. Wish I could go back. Wish the tropics had more jobs for me. Unfortunately my government doesn't spend enough.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lawrencechen 1y ago

Related question I've been asking my friends: if you were forced to get rid of air conditioning or democracy, which would you choose?

sebmellen 1y ago
In favor of what form of government?

aster0id 1y ago

So the solution to all of the world's problems is to move everyone to the Arctic/Antarctic regions! Got it

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Arubis 1y ago

Malaria. Next question.

jvilalta 1y ago

This was discussed in at least 3 books that I remember. Guns, getms and steel, why nations fail and the wealth and poverty of nations.

hopelite 1y ago

This is not a new theory at all and it’s also nonsense. Case in point; during the last glacial period when the temperature of Africa was similar to Europe today there was no magical climate based success in Africa. Another case in point, Rome and Greece were very successful and in hot climates while the people north them were not nearly as successful. Another case in point; Indian civilizations and the Bijang civilization among others, all in hot jungle climates. The Mayans, the Aztecs, etc. It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same. Its just moved on from magic dirt rationalization due to the cultural perspective of the early 20th century, to note adapted magic climate rationalization nonsense. Bonus case in point; the Hispanics that conquered the middle and southern Americas didn’t have any problem being not poor in hot and tropical climates, especially when you exclude the non-Hispanic people of those regions.

foogazi 1y ago
> Indian civilizations and the Bijang civilization among others, all in hot jungle climates. The Mayans, the Aztecs, etc. Agreed > It’s all just more constant rationalization and coping, i.e., trying to find some excuse and lie that can be maintained to justify the cult of everyone is the same. You took a strange turn from acknowledging warm climate great civilizations to then implying people from warm climates lack abilities to form great civilizations
seec 1y ago
Yes it is particularly stupid because there are European people doing way better than the natives in many of those hot countries. The argument is always that the bad white people oppress the natives but at some point, there are patterns that can't be ignored. Many places that the colons were left for the natives to run went to shit also, so clearly, it's not just about the climate. The amount of bullshit people can say for bullshit political correctness virtue signaling is absolutely insane.

black_13 1y ago

[dead]

moltar 1y ago

My additional theory on top of that was that in warm countries nature often provides free food. Don’t need to hustle. Don’t need to hustle to create shelter also. So the environment sort of discourages any extra effort.

fuzzfactor 1y ago
Good point, plus what if some cultures evolved to tolerate heat or cold more so than others. With different cultures having different numbers of eons available you would expect quite a bit of dissimilarity. About as much dissimilarity as the extremes of climate found in the places settled for long-term habitation. At the same time there could also be some with natural flexibility to adapt to more extremes than others, realistically outside the realm of one extreme or another dominating, but instead for some the ability to adapt is what's extreme enough to be uncommon. Sometimes maybe even beyond the range of both cold lovers and warm lovers combined.