[cardanome]

> The west advanced just fine without "brain drain" in the centuries prior.

Centuries prior they had a global slave trade going on. The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.

Culture just reflects the underlying material conditions that people live in. There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture. Wealth is cumulative and first mover advantages are strong. And if anyone threatens the current hegemony, there is always the use of force.

But yes, you are right there has been a stagnation since the 80s and things are slowly changing ins favor of countries like China and India.

[aliasxneo]

> There is nothing inherently superior about Western culture.

I'm not necessarily intending to contradict this outright, but after having just spent a summer reading through the history of the collectivist cultures in Russia/China during the last century, all I could think of is how lucky I was not to be born into that.

So, sure, nothing "inherently" superior, but certainly comparatively superior, in my opinion.

[namaria]

The locus of fast development will always develop superiority narratives. The fact is that there will always be a locus of concentrated development and it's not because it has a special culture.

[FredPret]

> The locus of fast development will always develop superiority narratives.

True

> The fact is that there will always be a locus of concentrated development

Also true

> and it's not because it has a special culture.

I don't think this is always true. Why can't there be cultures that are more likely to serve as a locus of fast development? Sure, there are geographic and climatic factors, but there are also cultural factors.

[namaria]

Where would this cultural specialty sit? We're all the same naked apes everywhere. Culture develops on the resources available. The human particles are too homogeneous for a group of special human behaviors to cause development. It is much more likely that the overall configuration of economic forces to cause the storms of extra value falling somewhere to give rise to the development and following cultural assertiveness.

Kinda like the rain forest. It's the global rain patterns that cause them. It's not that the rain forests have a special rain attracting power.

[FredPret]

It’s the opposite of a rain forest in every interesting way.

Development springs from us, it doesn’t appear out of the sky like rain.

Having personally experienced the humans in various places, I’m astonished at how differently people see and engage with the world. The difference in outcome, however, is all too predictable.

[namaria]

No, it's not special people that develop civilization. Civilization development is a higher order phenomenon that doesn't depend on personalities. The Whig narrative that special personalities drive development is a post hoc explanation with no basis in evidence.

[myworkinisgood]

Russia did have some problems, but China suffered badly due to colonialism.

[nradov]

Well that begs the question of why was China so weak that they could be easily colonized and exploited by the UK, Japan, and other foreign powers? At the time they didn't lack for population, natural resources, technology, ports, etc. Was their weakness caused by culture or something else? In other words, why were they the colonized instead of the colonizers?

I'm not trying to make excuses for the crimes against humanity committed in China by the colonial powers. But we need to look deeper into the root causes of historical events.

[hmm37]

To say they didn't lack in technology is just crazy. By the late 18th century early 19th century around the time of the first opium war, the technological differences was quite sound, such that militarily there was no way China cannons e.g. matched anything the West had, allowing UK's navy to bombard China from practically anywhere without any consequences. In fact even into the early 20th century, during the siege of Xi'an during the 1930s, they were still using ladders, etc. to try the breach the walls like they were doing a millennium ago.

[nradov]

Look deeper. At one point China was far more technologically advanced than the UK (or rather its predecessor states). Why did China fall so far behind by 1839? Was it culture or some other factor?

[FredPret]

I think nradov's question stands. Why was this the case?

[_t9ow]

Unfortunately this is not a question that can be easily addressed in a single comment on a forum, nor in a blog post. I know my answer sounds like a cop-out, but if you are willing to invest the time and energy, I'd highly recommend reading Ian Morris' magnum opus Why the West Rules -- For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future.

[Karrot_Kream]

This is a good question with a very complicated answer. But to give a short but inaccurate answer: the older a polity becomes the worse it gets at adapting to change due to its internal politics becoming more complicated. We're seeing that in the US right now with the last three very polarizing elections.

[hmm37]

There's many reasons. But one of the biggest reasons is probably simply hubris. That is Europe was importing as much technology, philosophy, resources and know how from around the world, leading up to the 18th-19th century. In fact a lot of the philosophers were to some degree familiar with some of the basics of Chinese philosophy, with e.g. David Hume, more than likely reading Chinese Buddhist philosophy (which is why many Buddhist experts tell beginners to read some of Hume's work to understand Buddhist philosophy). The fact that the Chinese did not believe in a god like the Christian God, etc. and yet were an advance civilization did help intellectuals believe that there was an alternative to e.g. scholastic philosophy and to the Christian religion, leading up to the 19th century ideas that there simply was no God (Nietzsche, etc.). It wasn't until around the 19th century when the West began to develop racial theories that they were somehow superior to everyone else, and therefore had nothing to learn from the old world.

The Chinese at some point went around the world during the Ming dynasty, sailing to Africa, etc. Found out that everyone was pretty much uncivilized in terms of technology, etc. and thought there was nothing actually out there. So later on they thought it was simply a waste of government funds to go on such expeditions, especially when everyone seemed to want to reach China instead to conduct in trade rather than the other way around. Therefore the Ming became extremely inward looking, etc. And that carried on into the Qing dynasty. But prior to that in the Song, etc. China was pretty advance. Another issue is that voyages, etc. could not be monetized. Merchants who took risks to explore the world, etc. made 100x more back on their investments, especially after the fall of the Byzantine empire to Ottomans which halted the overland silk road, forcing Europeans to find another route by sea to Asia for items they needed. The Chinese couldn't find such profits at least not in the 14th century.

Obviously this is all very simplistic, and you could easily write 1000s of pages on this topic. But to a large degree today's China is Europe of the past, where they feel they can learn from everywhere, but the West, not so much. Seems as if the two have traded places, where the West is hubristic. Thinking everyone else is pretty much stupid, and uncivilized. Although maybe mentalities of both is starting to shift again.

[pphysch]

People in Russia and China are saying the same thing about the West, having read critical histories of the modern West (e.g. Wang Huning, America Against America).

Based on the data, a lower/middle class person born in PRC almost certainly has better prospects of upward mobility and avoiding poverty.

[aliasxneo]

Interesting. I just read a long expose on Mao's party and the tens of millions of Chinese people they are responsible for killing. Can you recount a similar story of the West? Just trying to understand how it compares.

[pphysch]

There's a huge amount of documented history of mass killings, destruction of institutions, and economic exploitation by the West and USA in particular. By American authors, too.

Frankly, I'm astonished that you aren't aware of this.

[aliasxneo]

I never said I wasn't aware of the faults of the West. I'm not naive enough to think Western culture is anything close to being innocent of crimes (many which are, as you pointed out, documented).

However, I'm simply pointing out that the collectivist culture of these countries in the 20th century was responsible for killing vast swathes of their own populations. My question was, of the documented horrors influenced by Western culture, which do you see as being comparative to this unfathomable death toll?

[FredPret]

Name one on par with Stalin’s agricultural reforms or the Cultural Revolution or the madness in Cambodia.

[pphysch]

Genocide of Native American peoples, enslavement of Africans, political subjugation of LatAm, largest modern gulag system (#1 prisoners per capita, prison slavery still practiced).

[corimaith]

And Wang Huning's political conclusions from that would also largely support most of the imperialist actions of USA such as the forceful integration of natives and a dominant, hegemonic culture to ensure total stability.

Like, as postliberals the CCP and Russia do not like the West not because they were once dominant empires that conquered the world, in fact they respect that. They hate the West because of their belief in democracy, in diversity, in individualism and the belief in human rights.

[aliasxneo]

Well, Mao also “unified” China by systematically going into every province and murdering the opposition. Then of course they attempted to extend influence into Korea and Vietnam.

I don’t think it’s accurate to pin imperialism as a uniquely Western thing.

[FredPret]

So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south, and next thing you know the US is a global superpower, and that’s all there is to it?

Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?

[com2kid]

> So in your mind, slaves picked cotton in the south,

Slaves built the irrigation systems that made rice farming possible in the south. (People forget that the other huge slavery cash crop was rice).

Without the engineering and agricultural knowledge of slaves, many of the farms would have failed (and many did fail early on until the knowledge was spread around to plantation owners).

The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago.

> Surely you can conceive of a more complex world than that?

The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.

[FredPret]

Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?

To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.

> The US's short history is absurdly violent,

Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?

> but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.

They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.

[com2kid]

> Your points about skilled slaves leave me puzzled. If they were agricultural and engineering geniuses, surely we should find thriving civilizations in Central Africa from around the time when they were abducted into slavery?

This isn't some topic of debate. There is well documented historical proof of slaves designing and then building the rice field levees!

> To ascribe America's economic and technological success to the slaves is not an argument that will convince anyone, or win your side any votes.

The early economic success of the country was built off of slavery. That isn't something that seemingly needs discussion. The southern part of the US was a large economic power, even by European standards of the time.

> Are you sure? Have you read much history from the formative years in other countries?

I have, and in general other countries had a lot longer to perfect being assholes. The British empire did many horrible, horrible, things, but they took awhile to work up to it, it wasn't part of their initial founding.

Leopold II was in charge of an existing kingdom when he went on a quest to be one of the biggest assholes in history.

France is complicated, because their revolutions were so frequent for awhile, and a lot of the blood shed was French.

Meanwhile in America we got:

1. Mass murder of the natives 2. Inventing an entire new, more horrific type of slavery 3. Manifest destiny, with more genocide 4. Building the Transcontinental Railroad, with Not-Technically-Slavery 5. Massive racism against the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad

> They moved to the US for a reason. It is a shining beacon for nerds who would like to be rich.

Correct, the late 1800s and then the 20th century were a major turning point. Loosely enforced IP laws allowed Hollywood to thrive (super interesting history!), and poor environmental laws and a well educated workforce allowed the initial version of silicon valley to come about (look up why it is called silicon valley, and why it is also a superfund cleanup site!).

The US being slightly-less-racist against some people helped, and the less racist we were, and the more people we invited in from around the world, the better things got.

IMHO the best move the US Government could make for the economy is to offer the top 1% of graduates from the top universities in each major country an automatic VISA and a guaranteed path to citizenship.

The 2nd best thing the US Government could do for the economy is enforce Japanese style zoning laws on all major cities so people can actually afford to live in major metros again.

[FredPret]

I actually agree with many of the points you made here, especially your two policy proposals.

But I don't think you can mention the US in the same breath as imperial Belgium. Leopold was surely one of the low points of our species. But the Brits, for all the bad things they did - including in my native country - were the least bad empire up to that point, and forcibly ended slavery.

My broader point is that certain cultural values lend themselves massively to economic and technological development. European nations got these values by random chance, and then used this economic edge to then colonize the world. How else could tiny Belgium utterly subjugate the Congo?

[nradov]

The US's short history since 1776 is actually peaceful by relative standards. Despite the genocide of indigenous people, a revolution, slavery, a civil war, and some crime we have had a lower percentage of people killed through violence (including forced starvation) than China or Europe in the same period. Have you heard of WW1 and WW2? I make no excuses for the terrible things that Americans have done at times but the notion that Americans are somehow "absurdly violent" is simply ahistorical and unsupported by any hard data.

For all of its faults, it's great that the USA continues to be the country where the best minds from all over the world still want to move. It gives me hope for the future. Those immigrants are typically glad to be here and prefer to focus on building a better life instead of navel gazing recriminations over historical events.

[antisthenes]

> The US's short history is absurdly violent, but it also includes the US getting some of the best minds from basically all over the world to move here and build up a century's worth of IP.

Don't forget that US has some of the most prime agricultural land in the world, which they only got for the small price of genociding vastly less developed Native American tribes (with disease doing a large chunk of the work)

Given the violent European history several centuries prior, it would be absolutely unfathomable to just come across so much land with so little competition as the US colonies did.

This resource richness (and isolation via Atlantic) is very much responsible for US wealth today, perhaps as much as the brain drain of the 20th century, if not more.

[dingnuts]

> The image of slaves being from nomadic hunter gatherer tribes is a false narrative put into place by racists centuries ago.

This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of their levels of development starting in 1500 until the 19th century. You aren't implying that before the Atlantic slave trade, Africa was a monolithic culture, would you? No, that would be absurdly ignorant

> US's short history is absurdly violent,

Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history?

Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.

[com2kid]

> Bud I think you just don't like the US and maybe that's a personal problem.

You'd be wrong. What I have done is read my history books, and visited historical sites all around the US and abroad.

Saying "shit was violent" isn't saying I hate this country. Saying "we fucked up and we shouldn't do that crap again" is how we improve as a people.

> This argument is a straw man and irrelevant. Everyone knows Africa is a huge continent and the civilizations on the coast that sold slaves captured them from a variety of other cultures more inland.

Go visit some southern plantations. Learn how the plantations were built.

Farming isn't just physical labor. There is engineering involved. Designing flood levees to water crops was a technology that the US plantation owners acquired from slaves who in many cases designed and built the levees used on plantations.

> Compared to what? The Great Leap Forward? The reign of Alexander the Great? The last twenty years of Costa Rican history?

Those countries do not have a short history. The US has a very short history and it has involved a lot of violence in rapid succession.

Trying to say that our success as a nation is purely because of Hard Work, Brains, and Grit, is a false narrative that will lead to our downfall if we do not actually understand why we succeeded.

Our economic success from the transcontinental railroad is because we imported near slave labor to built it, at a high cost of human lives, and then we attempted to kick many of the surviving immigrants out. That is the simple truth about the largest successful rail project in US history, and understanding how labor costs impact nationwide infrastructure build-outs is, IMHO, rather important.

The success of Hollywood is because patent laws were widely ignored on the west coast, which allowed technology to progress faster. Our failure to understand how too strict of IP enforcement stifles growth is why a lot of iterative improvements come out of China now, they can iterate faster w/o waiting for patents to expire.

Our success in science and technology is because we have been willing to allow the best minds in from all around the world by ensuring a higher quality of life in the US compared to other places. But we've taken that for granted for too long, and allowed that qualify of life to slip while other countries have caught up.

Jumping up and down shouting "we're the best!" is inane, especially while the rest of the world isn't just standing still.

[kiba]

The North crushed the South, which clung to its slavery system which was unable to economically compete with the northern states' industrial power.

If anything, slavery was probably was a weight around the US's neck, the legacy of which we're still dealing with today.

[throwaway0123_5]

Colonial-esque behavior by the US was (is?) hardly limited to plantation slavery in the US south. For much of the late 1800s and most of the 1900s the US government was more than happy to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries to protect corporate profits. One particularly egregious example is the CIA-aided overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50s, largely to protect the profits of US fruit companies, but you don't have to look far to find more.

From General Smedley Butler, most decorated marine at the time of his death and the only marine with two medals of honor:

> I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

[FredPret]

That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect. (By the way, they're a hell of a lot better than any historical empire you could mention).

I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy: Every country out there has always defended its interests in more or less muscular ways. Exactly the way you describe for the US, and much worse as well. Where are they now?

[throwaway0123_5]

> That's an argument that the US isn't morally perfect.

It certainly seems to me like its also a strong argument that much of the US's wealth is based on colonialism or colonialism-adjacent policies, no?

> I don't see how this invalidates the idea that the US culture is better at creating and running a great economy

I didn't argue that. If US culture is/was in favor of colonialist antics and colonialism produces wealth for the US, that would actually be an argument in favor of US culture being better at producing a great economy. I would argue that the ends don't justify the means when the means are abusing far poorer neighboring countries.

I also wouldn't argue that colonialism is the only reason the US is wealthy. There are clearly aspects of US culture that are conducive to productivity and innovation that are more or less independent of colonialism.

[FredPret]

Fair.

My frustration arises from people who say that the US turned Guatemala or wherever into a banana republic, and therefore the West has zero moral worth and capitalism must be overthrown.

[throwaway0123_5]

Yeah that certainly seems hyperbolic. My opinion is that we need to do better in the future and consider our past when making current policy decisions. And in some cases I think we should proactively attempt to make amends.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

As the saying goes, there's a special place in Hell for the Dulles brothers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles

[fuzztester]

Yes. See:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

[blackhawkC17]

> The wealth of the West is build on colonialism.

It's built on rule of law, stability, low corruption, and good governance. Most countries lack these factors, making them stay poor.

Signed: Someone from a poor, developing country (Nigeria).

[synecdoche]

There is no basis for the claim that different things of some category would progress exactly the same given the same set of circumstances. Those different things, like culture, have significant impact on everything, including economic growth.

I'm sure you can think of a culture or policy, which you consider backwards, and counterproductive. Well, there you go.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

Now everyone but the west is practicing slavery, yet the supposed economic benefits of slavery seem to elude them. Why might that be?