Brown economists: Ancestral history explains roots of income inequality | Hacker News Reader

Brown economists: Ancestral history explains roots of income inequality

esciencenews.com

9 pointsAnon8428 comments

Interesting results, wrong conclusions. Plus they didn't separate cause and effect.

"He demonstrated tht [sic] the number of years since a society made the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is highly correlated to the level of income in the country today. That is, the earlier the agriculture development, the higher the income."

Or exactly the other way around - the better the person is at producing, the earlier they managed to switch to agriculture. Or in less politically correct terms, the smarter the people, the more they make today, and the earlier they managed to figure out agriculture.

"Second, the influence of population origins suggests that there is something that human families and communities transmit from generation to generation — perhaps a form of economic culture, a set of attitudes or beliefs, or informally transmitted capabilities — that is of at least similar importance to economic success as are more widely recognized factors like quantities of physical capital and even human capital in the narrower sense of formal schooling. If we understand which culturally transmitted factors are important and what contributes to their emergence and propagation, we might be able to design policy interventions that could help less successful groups and countries to close their developmental gaps."

Uh hu. Or maybe they are just smarter, and intelligence is heritable.

But they can't say that since it basically means that there is nothing poor counties can do, except encourage immigration and intermarriage. So they make a fluff feel-good conclusion.

I again recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel," for the refutation of "they were just smarter" argument.

We aren't talking about europe anymore though. Nor are we talking about colonialism, this is much more basic, and those argument don't work as well.

>Or exactly the other way around - the better the person is at producing, the earlier they managed to switch to agriculture. Or in less politically correct terms, the smarter the people, the more they make today, and the earlier they managed to figure out agriculture.

It might have more to do with when they first had to switch to agriculture. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers had a better lifestyle and better nutrition than early farmers, so why start farming if you don't have to? Farming is tedious, backbreaking labor which gives you grass seed to eat, while hunting is something men do for fun even when they don't have to, and gives you meat.

I don't really see the connection between farming and intelligence. Which would you rather trust a stupid person to do: plow a field or kill a lion with a spear?

My first thought was that adapting to the tedious, persistent labor of farm life would lead to useful traits in a modern economy, unlike hunting, which is more like a leisure activity.

"Paleolithic hunter-gatherers had a better lifestyle and better nutrition than early farmers"

I don't think that is true. Early farmers also hunted plus they had the grown food, so they did better.

"I don't really see the connection between farming and intelligence. Which would you rather trust a stupid person to do: plow a field or kill a lion with a spear?"

Kill a lion with a spear would be my answer - that requires strength and agility - but not much in the way of intelligence (witness animals that hunt).

Farming does require intelligence, when to water, when to plant, what to plant, when to harvest. The calendar was invented specifically to help with those.

After a while anyone could do it (which is why you think it's for stupid people) - but at the start? That took quite a lot of thinking, and experimenting.

I dunno, maybe they should look into if maybe Europe invading the rest of the world and killing off various percentages of the populations could be a factor?

Uhh, dude, if you read your history then pretty much everywhere has invaded everywhere else at some point, and populations that aren't being invaded are just as often killing each other.

So while it happens, it's not a data point here.

Sure, but I'd guess that there's a difference if resources are transferred back and forth within a small region, i.e. neighboring countries warring for a few hundred years, compared to some other country far away taking the resources with them after a successful invasion. And then continue to take everything they can get their hands on for the next few hundred years... It pools the resources in a single place, and as a result it also pools the ability to refine those resources in the same place (because its pretty hard to learn refining if you don't have anything to refine). Maybe it could be compared to how a town supported by resource producing villages made it possible to specialize in a trade that wasn't viable in a village setting.

And the killing off part was mostly a reference to diseases brought (without intention) to the Americas that more or less killed the civilizations there.

But maybe I'm just brainwashed by the people on the left.

Consider Zimbabwe. Its wealth was well, wealth, not money that's easy transferred, but fertile farms and abundant mines. Stuff that's inherent to the country itself. But Mugabe has brought it from the "breadbasket of Africa" to the brink or ruin (in fact, perhaps given the latest news from there, over the brink). Where did that wealth go? It wasn't transferred out by fleeing Europeans. It didn't even go into his Swiss bank account. It was simply destroyed.

I don't see a connection. You're saying that the only people capable of constructing a functioning society are us Europeans? I really hope I'm reading you wrong.

No, it doesn't matter that they were European per se. Let's say they were people from planet X who showed up on planet Y, built a load of stuff and then left, and the people from planet Y have no idea how to operate any of it. You know, like in Stargate: SG1. The point is that the people who built it are often the only ones who can operate it.

Singapore would disprove that theory. :)

:-)

How?

Hehe, I guess we're in big trouble now that China is building all our stuff now then ;)

(Yes I know, most of it is still designed/developed in the west..)

Uhh, dude, if you read your history then pretty much everywhere has invaded everywhere else at some point

Not really. Europeans essentially invaded and colonized the western hemisphere, Africa, India, Australia, etc... and yet none of the reverse happened. The Aztecs did not land on the shores of Spain. The Zulu did not invade France. (About the closest you can point to is the Turks besieging Vienna.) If you've ever wondered why europe dominated the new world & africa and not vice versa, I highly recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

Guns, Germs, and Steel falls apart if you examine the world after 1800. Why did economic growth go geometric in Europe and European colonies while many societies did not grow at all? It is not a matter of animals or steel or resources, because by the 19th century all this was widely disseminated.

A Farewell to Alms is a much better book with way more hard data than Guns, Germs, and Steel. It builds a solid and excruciatingly researched case that beginning in the middle ages unique demographic forces shaped the European genome and culture (eugenic forces). Diamond's conclusion that it was geography and nothing else pales in comparison to Gregory Clark's case.

Maybe it had something to do with the Europeans controlling much of the resources in the world since their successful invasions, and we're now seeing the rest of the world catch up at last?

I guess we'll know in a few decades if the balance of power has shifted over to Asia or not.

Or, just postulating here, maybe the capital that is transmitted is just that. Capital. That and tribalism/nepotism could explain these results as well.

Singapore would disprove that theory.

What aspect of Singapore's history gives lie to the theory that a tribe w/ portable resources will recirculate those resources within itself as it expands globally?

Singapore had no resources other than the brains of its people; they were the underclass who were booted out of Malaysia with just the shirts on their backs.

Ok... then they were colonized by a wealthy tribe. Where's the dichotomy?

They became the wealthy tribe once they were free of the mainstream Malaysian class system.

They became the wealthy tribe once they were free of the mainstream Malaysian class system.

Malays have little to do with Singapore's economy.

Singapore had no resources other than the brains of its people; they were the underclass who were booted out of Malaysia

Han Chinese are not Malays. From Appendix 1 of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Lynn & Vanhanen (p218):

Singapore

In 1974, data for a representative sample of 147 ethnic Chinese and 190 ethnic Malay 13-year-olds for the Standard Progressive Matrices were collected (Lynn, 1976). In relation to the British 1979 standardization sample, the Chinese obtained a mean IQ of 106 and the Malays a mean IQ of 90.5. ... The population of Singapore is 76 percent Chinese, 14 percent Malay, and 7 percent Indian

So the idea is: 1. Find a correlation around a bit of data relating to a very broad tendency in history. 2. Draw an unwarranted conclusion 3. ??? 4. Profit

> that there is something that human families and communities transmit from generation to generation -- perhaps a form of economic culture, a set of attitudes or beliefs, or informally transmitted capabilities

Hmmm, what ELSE might be transmitted from generation to generation. I just can't put my finger on it...

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