About David Friedman

[ClaytonB]

@Prateek Sanjay

It’s called genetics.

OK, but then the big question is why their genetics? That is, what environmental factors that were unique to the Jewish sub-communities were such an advantage to wealth accumulation? You need more than just “genetics” - are Russians and Indians genetically inclined toward excellence in Chess while Chinese and Koreans are genetically inclined toward excellence in Go?

The average IQ of the Ashkenazim is 115. This is also places them much higher than their Asian brothers in Israel itself, which is why Ashkenazi Jews are the richest and the most well off Jews in Israel. Biological differences are more convenient to some people than others.

A similar level of intelligence has been observed in Han Chinese, and they tend to be much smarter than their Tibetan, Uighur, or minority Chinese counterparts. Just as a Han is smarter than an Uighur, a typical Japanese is smarter than the typical Chinese, with the Japanese also showing stunningly high levels of IQ, placing them VERY well on racial comparisons of academic performance. In China, cotton mills owned and managed by Japanese entrepreneurs showed greater efficiency and productivity than nearby competing Chinese managed mills, thus clearly showing the difference between Japanese and Chinese ability to perform.

I’m uncomfortable with the vague and subjective nature of “smartness” and, further, I see no automatic link between (measurable) intelligence and wealth. I do not believe that you would find a strong correlation between academic aptitude and wealth. And please do not misinterpret this… yes, it is true that the wealthy are more likely to be educated but this is not because they are more intelligent (wealthy people are educated because they come from wealthy families not because they earned scholarships). Comparing like to like, I don’t think there’s a correlation. I doubt that the smartest educated people are wealthier than less intelligent educated people. I doubt that the smartest uneducated people are wealthier than less intelligent uneducated people.

Who’s smarter? The guy who solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, the current world Chess champion, or the guy who earn $1m per year buying and selling futures? They’re each incommensurable, in my view, and generic discussions of “smartness” in this regard are just voodoo.

Such differences are also observed in the United States, with some of the greatest stock intellectual human capital coming from New England. American history seems to be very biased and favourable towards New England states, and many American Presidents have been shown to come from these northeastern states, as have many top leaders in America. These intellectual differences have been very pronounced historically, and thus can be seen from the racial attitudes of Anglo-Saxons of New England origin among Americans, who had a low opinion of the “white trash” in the South, which consisted of Americans of the German, Belgian, Irish, and other European descent - people who normally weren’t in the habit of learning or reading even when they were literate. Examples of the extent of such racial attitudes can even be seen in H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories, in which backward Dutch descended villagers in New Jersey are described as “mongrels”.

Nature is bigger discriminator than humans are, and interestingly, the success of Jews is the success of free society and free market, as their tapped abilities have allowed them, alongside with Anglo-Saxon Americans, to gain high positions in their respective societies, and thus through their merit and achievements, ethnic groups of less intellectual bent have themselves been able to live better lives. At the same time, comparative advantage also helped uplift the once disdained “white trash” of the South, and we observe a Belgian Irish farmboy like Henry Ford becoming a successful entrepreneur, thus revealing another beautiful trait of free society that there is no zero sum to anything, and the best groups overrepresent themselves quickly and gain all the rewards of it, while even the worst groups manage to capture the remaining and untapped opportunities to pull themselves even higher.

This is all a bunch of collectivist gibberish. Henry Ford’s native region or the native regions of the US Presidents says nothing about the people living in those regions.

Clayton -