“Some actually value wealth of knowledge over material wealth, Harper.” – Andromeda
My butler just quit his job here at my stately home. He said he refused to be ordered around in that manor.
I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own . . . uh . . . emissions.
But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States):
“What causes poverty?”
That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.
But why is that a stupid question?
Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.
That’s a joke that keeps you coming back for myrrh.
Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.
Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.
Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.
The Wolf is always at the door.
I couldn’t find the wolf, which I guess makes it a where-wolf.
So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm.
We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”
That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.
So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters?
The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.
When a kangaroo gets hurt, it requires a hop-eration.
Liberty is important, but Virtue tempers Liberty and creates a boundary, otherwise Opium and Fentanyl Den™ would be the new Waffle House®. Or is that the existing Waffle House© after 2am?
What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.
Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free.
Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.
What else?
I hear Senator Mitch McConnell stole my rabbit. Mitch better have my bunny.
Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”
Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.
But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.
Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant.
Why is Haiti spelled without an “e”? Simple. They hate e.
Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67.
Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).
Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.
We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People.
But if we change out our People?
Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?
Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).”
Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans.
Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?
“Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?”
I assume that was a rhetorical question. Or are you from Haiti? Or OZ? 😉
Grumpy
Ha! Nah, it’s a riff on a quote: we keep repeating the mistakes of the past and when they fail, we call it “bad luck”.
I would refer you to “All the Trouble In the World” by P.J.O’Rourke. He has intelligent and funny and accurate answers to all the questions in the world
Love it. P.J. was one of my favorites. I have most of his books, and all of his Nat Lamp stuff.
IIRC, Jared Diamond described a couple of other factors in the Haiti vs. Dom Rep comparison. Haiti was French, where colonial rulers toured by never really settled; DR colonials came from Spain to stay and build a colony they wanted their children to live in. Haiti had a revolution that left the survivors fighting among themselves; the DR was run by a ruling family that preserved forest and ag land (for their own benefit, mostly). And the DR side of the mountain ridge gets more rain than the Haitian side.
I saw a documentary film about a charity water project in Haiti. The water distribution pipes had to be buried a safe depth to prevent damage, but the local laborers kept trying to dig as little as they could get away with. And maybe it was rational, if they were planning to dig up and resell the pipe as soon as they could. ’cause if they didn’t, someone else would. THAT’s the tragedy of a low-trust society!
Jared Diamond tries extremely hard not to mention racial differences, instead things like husbandry, as if nothing in Africa could have been domesticated. Even though there’s pictures of a White man using zebras to pull a cart, and Indian elephants, though smaller were made into beasts of burden elsewhere.
It’s race.
The Boers tamed and used African Elephants too – the called in “inspanning” which is Dutch for harnessing an animal.
Must have been that old white privilege in action again and cheating those poor Africans of useful amimals.
When you’re using Spain as an example of good administration, well . . . just sayin’.
Each individual country has its own issues, but if you were going to focus on just two, those are the two that I would pick. And Singapore’s got nada, and looks like the Jetsons compared to Haiti.
I don’t buy the Jared Diamond PC explanation. I spent several months in Haiti and concluded nothing can be done, no amount of foreign aid, no amount of attempted education, nothing, can be done for Haiti and Haitians. No matter how much we are the world you are. If you don’t believe me, go there.
Many years back, was bar talking with a couple that really, really leaned left (figured it out in a quick minute). They whined about the poor blacks and what can we do. My reply was nothing, as you can’t communicate with or influence people that are usually a 2 Sigma IQ (40 pts.) lower deviation than you.
Instantly, I became their Racist of the Day.
Yeah, I don’t bar talk with Leftists anymore. Even if you win the argument, when the reprogramming hits, they reset. No evidence will convince them.
“Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?”
If we do, it’ll have to be quickly, before we become Somalia.
Or … in a word … no.
Soo dhowow.
The nice thing about failure is that at a certain point it becomes self-limiting.
Oh, John Wilder, you dance so, so close to connecting all the dots and stating those painfully obvious conclusions that we all know to be true about HBD. I understand that you wish to keep your blog (and your freedom) and we on the dark side do welcome your adjacency. But I still want to hear you SAY it.
There will be no solution to the utter catastrophic mess we are in unless and until those in ‘authority’ summon the testicular fortitude to speak aloud that which everyone knows intuitively about basic human differences. Should that blessed day ever come, we might then all work together to fashion the necessary adaptations that will allow Haiti, for just one example, to participate in and contribute to the greater good for all of the world’s people. But for as long as we pretend that a nation or an entire demographic of volatile, impulsive, room temperature IQ subjects can compete, contribute and thrive in an increasingly technologically sophisticated world (Little Mogadishu on the Mississippi says “hi”) we will only get strife, division and, ultimately, genocide.
I hope there are no “bad” words or too much crimethink in this comment, but if there is, feel free to unpost my thoughts. I just had to get this off my chest this morning.
I don’t think there’s a problem with all of the world’s people living together in one society, as long as nobody is “voting”, which forces one group to serve another.
Bwahahahaha!
Naked, brutal violence will also force the beaten survivors to serve their conquerors.
That’s why it’s called “force”.
As Jordan Peterson has pointed out in multiple lectures, the US military has already determined categorically that anyone with an IQ below 83 cannot be used in any capacity that has a net positive result. It is therefore illegal to draft them. They’re 10% of the US population. The best you can hope for is to leave them be.
They’re actually more than 10%, and Kamala is one of them.
Nah, there are over 20,000 comments here and I think I’m up to 80 not posted.
It’s okay to be White.
Matter of fact, it’s downright better.
I’m pretty fond of it.
Our government is complicit in the invasion by the Third World of our nation. So many of these people are illiterate. Their children will wind up going to public schools across the country. This will place a big strain on our already struggling school systems. The costs of this will ultimately be borne by US taxpayers. I don’t like where this is going
Most arrivals past couple years expelled, to have a nation that actually functions. Tectonic socio-legal changes, no more female supremacy/male dispossession, no more identity politics etc. Equality out, hierarchy in.
Move capital someplace West, someplace not filthy like the Seaboard. D.C. re-named and employed in re-ed. E.g., use Goddess Columbia’s District to mail Bibles and Scriptural tracts to the world. That’d chap ’em.
You still have a generation of trained people (Boomers) largely experienced and capable, employable to reverse the Amerikan New Order. Lotsa hot military individdials in that group. Fighters.
This massive cadre of men, largely but not exclusively white, could right the ship. If God rolls with it. These are the very people demeaned, degraded, preyed-upon, and dispossessed the past four decades. Vast potential. So first they’d have to be given reasons (and guarantees) of a stake in the culture and the nation . . . something many of them don’t have now. But yes it could be done.
Move it every two years, and disperse the agencies to different states. No city larger than 15,000. They can meet at the local high school gym.
The people flocking here are the ones who couldn’t make it in (insert homeland here). It’s sorting for the low end already.
Manboons (h/t-Tex) is not a learning animal so I wouldn’t count on it.
Remember the Orwell quote about some ideas being so absurd only a stupid college punk or intellectual could believe them?
UBI, egalitarianism, equity, human nature is a construct, all of these fit right in.
We are led by some of the stupidest people in human history that would make Caligula’s horse laugh out loud, ending well is not on the menu.
Oh, it will end well, but the tough part has to show up first to remind us that prosperity isn’t an accident.
Haiti is a bad trip, been there, people were eating mud cookies.
Our cities are not that different,
The government likes that, depopulation is the game and stupid people are way easier to genocide than smart ones.
Marching Morons by CM Kornbluth. It’s available on the ‘net.
you didn’t mention property rights. property rights have a lot to do with wealth creation. if you can’t keep what you acquire; why bother.
Very good point – I was going for the bare minimum. China (for instance) has greatly improved prosperity with very limited property rights and no independent courts (which is another I’d add) or rule of law. The big package requires more than the minimum.
You’re confusing IQ with intelligence with learning with culture. All are distinct, and interdependent.
To simplify, if you have a pregnant Haitian mom get proper exercise and food, then raise that baby as a typical conservative American boy, his IQ would test out to the average of conservative American boys his age.
And come on, dude. Blaming cigarette companies is like blaming banks for loaning you money.
I won’t add much to what nick said, since he absolutely nailed how I would have responded. I would add that intelligence is 60-80% inherited, so if you had parents that had an IQ like that of the parents of a “typical conservative American boy” then you’d get similar results. Otherwise? Not.
Oh, and on the banks, Pa Wilder never foreclosed on a house. There were many folks who were disappointed when they didn’t get a loan.
Bwahahahaha!
That old saw has been chewed up and spat out so many times, it’s amazing some people keep trying to pull it out and wave it around.
Blacks are blacks no matter where they go, no matter what neighborhood they live in. There are innumerable cases now showing that when whites adopt black infants, they grow into black adults, very much like all the other black adults. (see also: Colin Kaepernick) “They apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” You can’t make gold from lead.
You’re confusing IQ with intelligence with learning with culture. All are distinct, and interdependent.
— can’t speak for John, but this is just an assertion, and kinda misses the point. IQ is a measurement of an attribute. Some people have more of it than others. It correlates well with success in intellectual pursuits, many of which are necessary for a functioning western style society and country. If you don’t have enough people with high enough IQ to do the things that are necessary for a successful western style society and country, you won’t have one. Full stop. Smart people are needed to do the work, build the systems, oversee the systems, and provide services. Without enough of them you get Haiti, and Africa, and dozens of other places that are sh!tholes by any modern measure.
To simplify, if you have a pregnant Haitian mom get proper exercise and food, then raise that baby as a typical conservative American boy, his IQ would test out to the average of conservative American boys his age.
— another assertion without factual basis. The best you could definitively say is that under those conditions he would achieve the full expression of his potential without the hindrance of malnutrition, disease, poverty, or damaging belief systems. See also twin studies, and studies of babies swapped at birth. It’s not the magic dirt, it’s the people. (and the insertion of “conservative” in the description betrays a political bias that harms your arguments)
Some places would probably be much better off, however you measure that, by NOT aping the western way of doing things. Their traditional methods of living and organizing themselves evolved over time to suit the resources available to them, including the innate abilities of the people. Displaced persons and people subjected to long periods of domination by other peoples and cultures are at a distinct disadvantage as they have lost their own methods, and are not suited to the methods of their dominating culture.
India is a very interesting laboratory where British culture was overlaid onto an existing rich and diverse culture. The experiment is still playing out…
nick