Pre-colonial Africa was highly decentralized. Why didn’t it also undergo an industrial revolution?
It has something to do with economic history.
Stephen, have you read Gregory Clark’s Farewall to Alms?
Nope. But I just looked through the table of contents and might have to order it.
@ GS
I think the reason why Africa remains poor is largely due to institutional factors. Much of Africa is democratic or socialist with national boundaries intersecting ethnic groups. This is the source of so many wars and rebellions. On top of it, despotic regimes are propped up by foreign aid. Currencies are devalued to increase exports. The risk having one’s investments nationalized is high (and this risk does not automatically just raise the rate of return on investment, a higher return is needed to compensate for the additional risk). And there are the trade barriers from the developed nations. There is the banning of goods produced in sweatshops. I’m sure that if these institutional factors were removed, Africa would become a rich continent.
Stephen, if this relates to the earlier debate in this topic, I agree with you that these are the root causes. The point I was trying to make to the other posters is that these causes manifest themselves in a lack of technology, not capital. Like I said, if lack of capital were the cause of a 50 fold difference in income we’d expect to see huge interest rates in developing nations.
and of course by technology you mean capital.
Thinking about this more, I’ve changed my mind. I think you’re right. If technology is not disseminated fast enough to increase productivity more rapidly than population, Africa will be stuck in a perpetual population trap.
Because it was a sparsely populated country with abundant natural resources.
The technology and ideas exist and are freely disseminated now, so why is Africa still poor? Because, of course, no matter how good your ideas, they’re worthless without a developed capital infrastructure to instantiate them… Europe was far readier than Africa is today to accommodate technological changes in terms of its capital infrastructure and financial development.
I’m pretty sure that population gains would eat up all the productivity gains from additional capital investment and it would remain poor.
and the reason that you aren’t sure about the claim as it would have applied to the UK from 1860 is that things didn’t go that way?
I mean it was not like England had a growing population and influx of immigrants…
Has anyone mentioned culture yet? Boettke, Coyne and Leeson have a fascinating paper on “institutional stickiness,” where they argue that whether or not formal institutions will stick depends primarily on culture and informal institutions.
So perhaps Africa lacks the culture required for institutions that promote growth: private property, rule of law, and free trade.
See “Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics.”
First, IQ charts have an annoying way of being a bit off due to economic disparity and such. But lets get past that and presume you are right.
Even assuming any ethnicity has a lower intelligence, that is counting the bell curve (for every person with 130 IQ, there is someone with 70 or so IQ to even it out to about 110). No matter how dumb the AVERAGE is, there will always be people ABOVE average. Every ethnic group will have its Einsteins and Teslas. Really, so long as there are enough above average or otherwise competent people, the market can be adjusted to fit for the lower average intelligence.
No, the real problems of Africa are annoying circles. People are poor because of (largely) European colonization followed by shitty land splits (look at the Congo), leading to despotic dictators seizing control and talking “Socialism” to keep looting. It can be stopped though (Look at the results of free market reforms in Botswana)
I was thinking about my earlier argument today, and I’ve changed my mind again. A lack of technology cannot be the explanation for the continuation of African poverty. All the technology of the first world is available to the third world. It really comes down to a low level of capital per person. Population control, capital accumulation, and the elimination of institutional trade barriers (both inter- and intra-national) would allow Africa to become rich.
Why does the water swirl where it does in a river, and not couple of feet to the right? Why did the swirl move couple of feet upstream?
Evolution has wired us for cause-effect pattern extraction, for simplification of the complex world around us. I sense that we may be abusing this gift in this thread a bit.
Z.
They certainly never had any trouble figuring how to operate AK-47s and pickup trucks.
So what’s the solution to “lack of culture”?
A good example to follow. A natural elite.