History Why are poor countries poor?

[cancat]

Wanting more that what you have or need makes you in debt to what it is that you want. If you have everything you need that you want, then IMO that makes you rich. In western society there is literally no limit to want a person might want.... and therefore peoples needs change. So labling someone poor or rich is irrelivant unless you know exactly what that person wants or needs.

Western society leans what to much to ones desire to be "Rich" in an economy sence.... which is understandable because you need money to get the things "you" supposibly need. A lot is lost in western societies when ones focus is purely on getting rich.

I think the OP was talking about rich and poor in an economic sense. Most people would value living longer. I posted this before. It illlustrates the correlation between country's economic growth and life expectancy.

 

[nut]

I think the OP was talking about rich and poor in an economic sense. Most people would value living longer. I posted this before. It illlustrates the correlation between country's economic growth and life expectancy.

But are we rich because another country is poor?

 

[JoondalupJ]

I disagree with this. The kind of development that occurred in Eurasia was driven by necessity and opportunity. Australia was isolated so didn't benefit from technology transfer, it lacked domesticable species and the land generally couldn't support the population densities to make domestication a necessity - though in areas where population densities did expand in modern day Victoria there is evidence of agriculture (sophisticated eel farming infrastructure) and settled communities. There's no reason to assume that were they to have faced the same pressures of necessity and opportunity aboriginal cultures would not have followed a similar trajectory as other cultures that developed "civilization"

Pressures of necessity, thats exactly my point.

 

[Admiral Byng]

But are we rich because another country is poor?

Not necessarily. Factor in that wealth is not fixed, it can be both created and destroyed. It could be we are rich because we are better at creating wealth than poor nations, or less prone to destroying it through poor judgement.

 

[JoondalupJ]

Whats the mother of invention?

ell once it was Frank Zappas band., but necessity could be the mother of invention.

 

[The_Reaper]

Pressures of necessity, thats exactly my point.

The aboriginals had the disparagement of having no crops. The first settlements in the world were built because of agriculture and the absence of any agriculture such as wheat of rice the Aborginals never had a change to reach this stage.

Even the wheel was only invented to make transport easier and numerical systems invented to make counting crops easier etc.

 

[bombermick]

Guns, Germs and Steel discusses the Aborigines of Northern Australia trading with those from Papua New Guinea who brought with them bows and arrows. It's a wonder why the Aborigines never took this technology for itself.

They may have been happier with a simpler lifestyle, but they could have defended themselves if they were more open to foreign technology.

 

[The_Reaper]

Guns, Germs and Steel discusses the Aborigines of Northern Australia trading with those from Papua New Guinea who brought with them bows and arrows. It's a wonder why the Aborigines never took this technology for itself.

They may have been happier with a simpler lifestyle, but they could have defended themselves if they were more open to foreign technology.

Because PNG and Indonesia were highly successful in fighting off Europeans...

 

[Jentleman Geff]

How many indigenous peoples in those countries were wealthy before subjugation? If we are comparing different country's relative wealth then America, Australia and Canada would have been piss poor before colonisation.

Some of the Mesoamerican cultures were exceedingly wealthy. The Conquistadors were blown away by their cities. Life was reasonably good for most of them, except if you lived around the Aztecs.

 

[The_Reaper]

Some of the Mesoamerican cultures were exceedingly wealthy. The Conquistadors were blown away by their cities. Life was reasonably good for most of them, except if you lived around the Aztecs.

Unless you weren't Aztec. Then things would be pretty shit for you.

 

[Jentleman Geff]

Unless you weren't Aztec. Then things would be pretty shit for you.

Still, things were pretty shitty in Europe if you weren't Catholic.

 

[rayven]

I was born in the lands of the Permangk, they farmed whats known as the Mount Lofty ranges. They were an exceedingly rich culture. They had an abubdance of food, land, resources, peace and harmony. They traded with the cultures of the Murray mouth and the Adelaide plains. In fact they built boats to trade. The key to their abundantly wealthy lifestyle was sustainability, respect and sharing. They chose not to over commit themselves to anything and to be rational about their wants and needs and be gratefull for whats been provided to them, full well knowing that if they were, it would in most cases always be there. Food was free and always available. Water was clean and free, air fresh, trees healthy, roads uncluttered.

They were rich, filthy rich because they always thought about the future of their children. Their religon was based around preserving these policies/qualities, we are yet to understand or administer.

 

[bombermick]

Because PNG and Indonesia were highly successful in fighting off Europeans...

They retained most of their culture, which the Australian Aboriginals largely haven't managed to do.

 

[The_Reaper]

They retained most of their culture, which the Australian Aboriginals largely haven't managed to do.

They also had very limited white colonisation.

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Guns, Germs and Steel discusses the Aborigines of Northern Australia trading with those from Papua New Guinea who brought with them bows and arrows. It's a wonder why the Aborigines never took this technology for itself.

They may have been happier with a simpler lifestyle, but they could have defended themselves if they were more open to foreign technology.

Probably much the same reason as why we still use QWERTY keyboards

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Some of the Mesoamerican cultures were exceedingly wealthy. The Conquistadors were blown away by their cities. Life was reasonably good for most of them, except if you lived around the Aztecs.

Except that gold and silver weren't units of currency so wouldn't have meant "rich" by any definition we use today.

Niall Ferguson's History of Money gives into some of these issues, rare it highly

 

[Wallaby]

Kleptocracy, in some cases. See the rule of Mobutu in the Congo as one example.

See Belgian colonisation of the Congo for even better example.

 

[Jentleman Geff]

Except that gold and silver weren't units of currency so wouldn't have meant "rich" by any definition we use today.

Niall Ferguson's History of Money gives into some of these issues, rare it highly

They lived lives that were comparable or better than their European counterparts prior to their discovery by Columbus.

 

[Seeds]

Self sustainability is what all civilisations had at one point or else they would have died out, so the ability to defend ones self sustainabilty with out the need for anything else would make a society independantly neutral.

Wanting more that what you have or need makes you in debt to what it is that you want. If you have everything you need that you want, then IMO that makes you rich. In western society there is literally no limit to want a person might want.... and therefore peoples needs change. So labling someone poor or rich is irrelivant unless you know exactly what that person wants or needs.

To go back to the Aboriginals and compare what they needed before white man and compare it to what they "need" now is what makes the majority seem poorer now. Because they have A/C housing and electricity doesnt mean they are richer now....lol.

Western society leans what to much to ones desire to be "Rich" in an economy sence.... which is understandable because you need money to get the things "you" supposibly need. A lot is lost in western societies when ones focus is purely on getting rich.

Can you or anyone on here describe what qualifies as "needs" as compared to other goods that are not "needs". Please where do I draw the line?

Also what if a native Australia child was dieing a long and suffering death from a disease that Europeans had a simple cure for. Would you regard him as being rich?

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Can you or anyone on here describe what qualifies as "needs" as compared to other goods that are not "needs". Please where do I draw the line?

Also what if a native Australia child was dieing a long and suffering death from a disease that Europeans had a simple cure for. Would you regard him as being rich?

Well, to play devils advocate, you could argue that without means to extract more food from the land - domesticable crops and livestock, meaning new diseases that require tolerance adaptations that hunter gatherers lack - causing the kind of apocalyptic consequences faced by pretty much every indigenous group encountered by European colonists outside of Eurasia.

Hunter gatherers tend to be very conscious of family planning, abortions and infanticide is relatively common, through sheer necessity a band cannot have more infants than can be easily transported.

By saving babies that would otherwise be culled by way if natural selection you would threaten the survival of the whole band. The other option is the current situation, whereby we use the miracles of our culture to save babies when surviving adults have lower life expectancy and a much lower quality of life than their forebears before their society was torn asunder by disease and the deprivation of displacement.

Is that really worth saving a few babies? Do indigenous people end up 'richer' because of that?

I would argue not.

 

[Seeds]

Well, to play devils advocate, you could argue that without means to extract more food from the land - domesticable crops and livestock, meaning new diseases that require tolerance adaptations that hunter gatherers lack - causing the kind of apocalyptic consequences faced by pretty much every indigenous group encountered by European colonists outside of Eurasia.

Hunter gatherers tend to be very conscious of family planning, abortions and infanticide is relatively common, through sheer necessity a band cannot have more infants than can be easily transported.

By saving babies that would otherwise be culled by way if natural selection you would threaten the survival of the whole band. The other option is the current situation, whereby we use the miracles of our culture to save babies when surviving adults have lower life expectancy and a much lower quality of life than their forebears before their society was torn asunder by disease and the deprivation of displacement.

Is that really worth saving a few babies? Do indigenous people end up 'richer' because of that?

I would argue not.

Your sole argument here seems to be about the use of abortion. Last time I checked abortion is legal today. We can all use it if we want. I also have to admit I don't know much about Aboriginals and their history, but how exactly do you know that their health was no better than today? Yes they may not have had access to drugs and booze or faced European diseases but they also didn't have access to developed world medical serivces and treatments, a proper diversity of food for nutritional purposes, proper shelter from weather extremes and various other benefits associated with developed economies that extend life expectancy and oppurtunties to find and employ your talents to enable more rewarding lives.

 

[Dont be a lemon]

Another factor that hasn't being mentioned is that half of the third world still uses old European colonial boundaries. These nations did not gradually evolve over hundreds and thousands of years like in Europe and Asia. Many of these countries combine many different ethnic groups whose only real point in common was that they had the same colonial master.

Africa is the one that always comes to mind for me. If the boundaries had been based on ethic groupings rather than imperial/colonial interests the map would look completely different.

Reminds me of something my history teacher years ago said "If you see a straight line between countries, it means someone in London or Paris drew the map."

 

[cancat]

Hunter gatherers tend to be very conscious of family planning, abortions and infanticide is relatively common, through sheer necessity a band cannot have more infants than can be easily transported

Hunters gatherers had no concept of family planning. Without knowledge of contraception babies would be conceived on an unplanned basis and the child killed, either directly or by neglect, if the circumstances were not convenient for the raising of a child. Multiple births would be especially burdensome, hence the common taboo around twins in indigenous societies. The sick and the elderly would also be a burden to a group that needed to be mobile - and would suffer the same fate.

The move from subsistence existence to agricultural societies, where a reliable food source was available without uprooting the whole community, meant that larger populations could be supported. This change resulted in changes to our moral views so that killing children, the sick and the elderly was no longer acceptable. Some people consider this as progress.

By saving babies that would otherwise be culled by way if natural selection you would threaten the survival of the whole band. The other option is the current situation, whereby we use the miracles of our culture to save babies when surviving adults have lower life expectancy and a much lower quality of life than their forebears before their society was torn asunder by disease and the deprivation of displacement.

Is that really worth saving a few babies? Do indigenous people end up 'richer' because of that?

I would argue not.

So your options are "culling" inconvenient children because we have to move our whole society around searching for food, as opposed to having shops with fresh food, not to mention "miracles" such as clean water and modern medicine? We really don't have to make that choice. We can retain culture and embrace scientific progress.

I question your belief that current indigenous people have lower adult life expectancy than their forebears. The ABS states a life expectancy at birth for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males at 67.2 years and females at 72.9 years - which is lower than non Aborigine expectancy largely due to higher infant mortality rate.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@...0~Jan+2012~Main+Features~Life+expectancy~3110

However the research shows that in hunter gatherer societies the life expectancy is less than 40 years.

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Your sole argument here seems to be about the use of abortion.

Well then clearly I didn't do a good enough job of explaining myself, either that or you didn't read the post properly.

My argument was that unless you bring agriculture and the diseases and other negative consequences etc as well then merely saving a baby is pretty pointless in a society that can't support more babies. History and the laws of unintended consequences suggests that kind of do-good approach would result in more misery and deprivation in the long run than the feel-good benefit of "saving" a baby would result in benefits for hunter gatherers.

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Hunters gatherers had no concept of family planning. Without knowledge of contraception babies would be conceived on an unplanned basis and the child killed, either directly or by neglect, if the circumstances were not convenient for the raising of a child. Multiple births would be especially burdensome, hence the common taboo around twins in indigenous societies. The sick and the elderly would also be a burden to a group that needed to be mobile - and would suffer the same fate.

The move from subsistence existence to agricultural societies, where a reliable food source was available without uprooting the whole community, meant that larger populations could be supported. This change resulted in changes to our moral views so that killing children, the sick and the elderly was no longer acceptable. Some people consider this as progress.

The move to agriculture was gradual, as was the building of tolerance to agricultural diseases (influenza etc) that wiped out tens maybe hundreds of millions of people after European farmers made first contact with hunter gatherers.

And the shift to agriculture was not done out of convenience, a considerable chunk of the transition period to full agricultural society would gave been pretty damned miserable, agriculture only really kicked off because people were desperately hungry enough to rat grass. The would be very little attraction to going from hunting to farming if not driven by necessity.

My ultimate point though is that for mist indigenous peoples civilisation had been incredibly destructive and that in a hypothetical world, given the opportunity, it would be much more humane to have high infant mortality than to save a few babies and rapidly drag a hunter gatherer society into the modern era just to save a few babies.

In fact, its not even hypothetical, its pretty much the official policy when uncontacted tribes are discovered in PNG or the Amazon. We don't go in and "save" their babies, we go to great lengths to keep modernity away from them because even the mist benign of bacteria/virrii can be absolutely deadly for those without adaptations developed in farming communities over thousands of years.



,

So your options are "culling" inconvenient children because we have to move our whole society around searching for food, as opposed to having shops with fresh food, not to mention "miracles" such as clean water and modern medicine? We really don't have to make that choice. We can retain culture and embrace scientific progress.
].

No. Again, one of is having trouble communicating/comprehending said argument. See my previous post, start from scratch, burn that sack of straw, and come back once you've got a grasp on my actual argument.