A longer time period may also give further credence to the “institutional” explanation concerning the greater defence of property rights and multilateral balance of power and fractured power structure largely resulting from the unique status of the catholic church, eventually fosterin g the conditions for the so called industrial revolution. There’s a reason why in arabian nights stories hidden treasure was such a unique theme, outside of Europe the only way to keep your wealth was to hide it.
This is demonstrably wrong. It wasn’t an advantage when whites a few centuries back were enslaving people?
Every race has its “advantages” (it’s hard to call them that if you want to be objective about it, I would say features), and every race has engaged in slavery of some sort of their own, or should we just ignore the time when tribes conquered one another & didn’t decide to opt to integrating the losers & make them slaves instead?
Not everyone in a given race is the same either. If someone blatantly painted Whites as “advantaged”, they’ve obviously never met the fair share of lowest common denominator that every race has, relative to one another (in this case, Rednecks, to generalize; they are not hard to find in other races if one does a little investigating).
Also, by the logic of “cultures from all over the world contributed to Western progress”, it would be fair to also say that said cultures can also work against western “progress”, as well as the more obvious observation of “all cultures tend to interact & influence each other in some way per influence.”
A longer time period may also give further credence to the “institutional” explanation concerning the greater defence of property rights and multilateral balance of power and fractured power structure largely resulting from the unique status of the catholic church, eventually fosterin g the conditions for the so called industrial revolution. There’s a reason why in arabian nights stories hidden treasure was such a unique theme, outside of Europe the only way to keep your wealth was to hide it.
The theory refers to a time long before the industrial revolution. It refers to the evolutionary period prior to what we know as civilization. I do agree that institutional factors very, very important to the advancement of human civilization. But why did certain areas of the globe develop the institutions neccessary for an industrial revolution? Then prior to that why did certain areas develop the institutions that led to the institutions that led to the industrial revolution? Then back futher and further. This leads to the theory about evolutionary differences and its competing theories (which mostly boil down to luck). geography, animals and plants ripe for domestication, etc.
The smartest Africans are far smarter than the average Caucasian. When speaking of intelligence differences between races, we are not speaking of non-overlapping IQ* bands but, rather, averages that are shifted slightly higher or slightly lower within the same band of greatest and lowest. There are people of every race who get PhDs in mathematics and physics and all the hard stuff - things that the average person in any race is not capable of.
I’m skeptical that it is possible to meaningfully isolate “intelligence” from all the other differences between races. What is clear is that races and cultures vary significantly in ways that confer a variety of advantages and disadvantages on the members of those respective races. Athletic ability, academic aptitude, business acumen, security awareness, artistic expression, and so on, vary significantly between race and race, culture and culture.
Such information is useful to scholars, underwriters and politicians seeking to divide and conquer the population. Not sure what else it is good for.
Clayton -
*I’m using “IQ” colloquially, here… IQ tests do not measure anything meaningful, IMO, except, perhaps, puzzle-solving aptitude. It goes a long way toward understanding white culture to note that we identify intelligence with ability to solve puzzles.
They say neccessity is the mother of all invention, and I tend to believe that it was Turkish control of Asia minor that forced Europeans to expore ocean routes to get to India. Other advances may of also had environmental causes.
Whether climate selected for higher intelligence, I don’t know. But I do feel that this is a legimate hypothesis that should be free of policially correct baggage when explored. I’m sure we all heard of the case of DNA co-discoverer James Watson and his racist tyraid:
He claimed genes responsible for human intelligence would be found soon, but didn’t wait for the evidence before coming to his own conclusions:
“all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”. He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.
I’m willing to wait and see what the facts are, and am confident that future advances in genetic engineering will allow members of all cultures & ethnicities to share in any ‘intelligence gene’ that is discovered.
Yes they can. But did they?
Oviously they did not. Aside from the Arab expansion and a few incursions by the steppe peoples the West was left undisturbed - courtesy of its favourable (somewhat remote) geographic position.
Contrast this with the belligerent West working against everybody elses progress - in particular its near constant harrassement of East Europe - already strained under the pressure of peoples further east.
That is fine but it does not go deep enough. Why would such institutions be able to flourish here, but not elsewhere is the real question.
The answer is the relative security from foreign threat. Embattled regions will enact regimentation which squashes independent institutions, does away with political fragmentation and introduces rigid hierarchies.
So in the long term the real harm of being invaded is not in the direct damage done by the invader, but in the regimentation subsequently enacted by the invaded.
Shelter-building is not something Africans learned from Europeans. Necessity or not they also built shelters.
The Mediterranean.
I cant believe we still need to argue over this.. Race and intelligence correlations have been shown beyond doubt, its just the way it is. Europeans and east asians have the highest IQ, other races have.. a bit lower. Check out “Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis”, it has a ton of studies and analysis put together. Its like geocentric or flat earth society still arguing against it. Hoppe is right, give the man a berak.
BTW, this can also be used to explain the scandinavian socialism’s effectiveness.
Shelter-building is not something Africans learned from Europeans. Necessity or not they also built shelters.
Of course not. But thats not the theory. It says that the technology reached a certain level in africa. Once it reached a certain point the environmental pressures were eliminated. When africans first left africa and took their technology they encountered environments where their technology was insufficient. This reintroduced the pressure on the populations. This pressure forced them to create new technologies. Those populations that were better able to develop technology were able to survive.
This process is connected with shelter, clothing, hunting, planning, etc.
Aside from the Arab expansion and a few incursions by the steppe peoples the West was left undisturbed - courtesy of its favorable (somewhat remote) geographic position.
Geographic isolation is also favorable to evolution. But you are right its hard to develop when marauders are burning your crops and villages. However just to be fair, just because eastern invaders were not burning the crops dosent mean that western europe was immune. ex) the Germanic invasions of Rome, Viking raids throughout northern europe, Moorish and Arab incursions in the Mediterranean, constant warfare between themselves.
I think it’s worth noting “even” as late as 1700, India and China had a 22.6% and 23.1% share of world GDP respectively, with the whole of Europe at 23.3%, with living standards and per capita income hardly distiniguishable for the average peasant(though slightly higher for the Europeans I think). So even up until fairly recently the more “highly evolved” whites had not greatly surpassed other parts of the world in terms of economic performance, taking with a pinch of salt of course, the above aggregate measures. To me this points more towards better instiutional conditions, both India and China being largely ruled by despotic regimes, with a rigid caste system in the former and becoming increasingly isolationist in the latter, though a I’m sure there are a whole host of other socipolitcal factors that contribute towards the later shift in relative economic performance.
Figures were obtained from: Angus Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run, OECD, Paris, 1998.
Hoppe is so wrong on this one. Lets assume that the people in North are better generally. Then even with the dumbing down they would still be at par or above the lesser Third world.
Japan and China are almost better and dominant than many Northerners. And if the argument arises that the difference in intelligence is nominal exemplified by only the climate than such a difference is negglible.
The west just had better ideas. Now that they have rejected these better ideas, the results are showing.
Southern, the thesis breaks down completely when you look at Native American History. Which was the exact opposite. Those who went towards warmer climate became a more advance civilization and those who stayed up north lived in huts. As a matter of fact it breaks down completely by just looking at history!
I wonder what percent of people actually listed to the audio. Here’s a couple points people seem to be talking about which Hoppe didn’t make:
- Only northern climates are harsh
- Differences in intelligence are the sole factor in the advent of the IR.
I have some problems with how Hoppe presents stuff like this sometimes, but he makes some good ideas too.
China’s, Japan’s and Korea’s great performance does not go against the genetic advantage theory, on the contrary, it completely supports it. Eastern Asian people have the highest average IQ in the world, from ~100 in china to a superhuman ~108 in japan.
It does not break down if you look at IQ as the important factor rather than one of the things that influence iq (climate)
and that has nothing to do with the fact that all those above mentioned countries have undergone rapid economic development and rises in their standard of living upon economic liberalisation? Back in the 60s, when the gdp per capita income of both India, South Korea and China were not only pathetically low but very similiar, South Korea made broad sweeping reforms in a free market direction, with China following later. India made modest reforms in the 1990s when on the brink of bankruptcy and a foreign exchange reserve crisis, but is still pretty socialist in important areas with miles of red tape. And then notice the differences in nutrition scores, income and IQ scores? I think we should be more careful making such broad sweeping statements based on historical data, especially when we have not accounted for conditions that are not the same and did not remain so when making comparisons like that.
Before a case is made differentiating regions by genetic intelligence it must be proven that there are genetic differences in intelligence. That has not been done.
Yes it has.. Read the book i pointed or exerts that are available. It is very comprehensive on the topic
From a review of the data used in Race Differences in Intelligence:
“The majority of the data points were based upon convenience rather than representative samples. Some points were not even based on residents of the country. For instance, the “data point” for Suriname was based on tests given to Surinamese who had migrated to the Netherlands, and the “data point” for Ethiopia was based on the IQ scores of a highly selected group that had emigrated to Israel and, for cultural and historical reasons, was hardly representative of the Ethiopian population.”
Certainly not a reason to reject the work out of hand, but this does raise a few eyebrows for me. I find the claim that the genes that “determine” intelligence have been “found” strange, especially when we still struggle to find the causal factors influencing much simpler and better defined characteristics. Up until recently(and I was taught this crap at high school), microbiologists were absolutely convinced that only the genes themselves and not their arrangement within DNA as a network had any influence on biological characteristics.