| Socio-cultural values. Japan has totally different values from the US. China, same. Apparently that does not prevent them from all being prettu successful economically speaking. Religious beliefs. Huh ? Japan, China, same as previous point. Totally different from Europe or US. But otherwise pretty successful countries. Where's the correlation between economy and religion? Your argumentation continues in the same vain. But he didn't said that Socio-cultural values have to be THE SAME for economic success. He said that socio-cultural values are a FACTOR for economic success, which is a quite different thing. For example, regarding cultural values: Japan has different values from the US, and China too. That doesn't mean that those kinds of values (Japan/China and US values) are not ALL suited for a successful economy, and a country with a different set of values (say, Mexico) wouldn't do as well. So, the correlation of social values to economic success (which no economist/sociologist really argues against btw), is not that only ONE kind of value system can produce economic success, it's that different value systems do either well or bad on economy. Same for religion, etc. Natural resources. Japan has no access to natural resources on their land. Singapore has no resources. Luxemburg has no resources. Switzerland has no resources. Holland has no resources. Funny how all those countries have rather healthy economies. Funny, how all those countries have different KINDS of economies. Natural resources is a huge factor for China or US like economic success. Not for Singapore (= a corporate hub), not for Kayman Islands (= a tax shelter), etc. That said, Japan without easy ACCESS to natural resources, on the other hand, would have been a complete failure. |