Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Rich

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9 points·5350-uiop-1130··4 comments

When I was living in India, I used to see my dad praying 1 or 2 hours a day, I used to see my friends waiting in a queue for many hours just to visit their god in a temple. I used to wonder isn't this a complete waste of time from society's point of view.

If all these people could use that time to do something productive, it would help the country. I remember my aunt telling me that only God can fix India's problems, when I disagreed she was pissed off.

I wanted to be a hero and fix India's problems but then I took the easy way out and moved to a developed country.

> I wanted to be a hero and fix India's problems but then I took the easy way out and moved to a developed country.

Not so easy way :-)

The video says that 20% of the wealth is cultural. I guess it's more. Western countries are probably so successful because they inherited the greek and roman culture.

Some countries in Asia (like Japan) switched from feudalism to capitalism in few decades.

The difficulties of Africa could be explained by the lack of the writing (unless it's a consequence). The society is more flat than vertical.

Religion has it's historical roots in power. Early civilizations where often broken down into:

1. religious class 2. warrior class 3. artisan class 4. peasants and labour class

I think this structure is pretty similar to the caste system of India whereby only the Brahmins are allowed to perform religious rites and are richly rewarded for it financlally by the peasants and labourers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility != https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

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