Doing Less Would Be Better

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Walter Williams succinctly demolishes a host of myths about the causes of African poverty, most notably the idea that it is a legacy of colonialism:

Poverty is not a cause but a result of Africa's problems. What African countries need the West cannot provide. They need personal liberty. That means a political system in which there are guarantees of private property rights, free markets, honest government and the rule of law. Africa's poverty is, for the most part, self-inflicted. Some people might disagree because their college professors taught them that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That's nonsense. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Third World countries such as Ethiopia, Liberia, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, yet they are home to some of the world's poorest people.
Williams, not content merely with a tearing-down by counterexample, cites several lines of strong evidence in favor of his view that the continent needs freedom. Furthermore, our usual response of sending foreign aid is actually making it more difficult for Africans to win freedom for themselves by empowering despots.

-- CAV

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

While more freedom is better than less, I don't think Africa's poverty is explained by that.

East Germany had a reasonably high standard of living even though it was unfree.

Africa is poor because blacks have low IQs and there is likely a substantial genetic component to this. Since humans evolved in Africa, you'd expect that civilization would have developed there first, but it didn't develop at all.

Low IQ is correlated with poverty, crime and other social problems.

I thought this was racist, but it seems hard to get around the evidence.

http://jewamongyou.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/why-i-believe-in-race-realism/

-JB

Gus Van Horn said...

JB,

I explored the 85 IQ canard ages ago and found it wanting.

Just a couple other quick points: (1) Correlation is not the same as causation. (2) If East Germany had such a great standard of living, why did its enlightened rulers build walls to keep its citizens from escaping?

Gus

Anonymous said...

While it's true that correlation doesn't mean causation, it may under certain circumstances. It was reasonable to believe that consuming lots of alcohol caused intoxication before anyone ever discovered the principles of biochemistry.

The white American IQ is 100 and the black American IQ is 85. That's not significant in and of itself.

On the other hand, it is constant wherever tested. Put differently, if you were to look at the IQ tests of blacks and whites in all 3,200 counties in the USA you'd find the same 100/85 result with minor variations.

And we also have the things that were mentioned in the link such as brain size studies and adoption studies.

While there might be an environmental explanation for low black achievement in Africa, what about Haiti or blacks in the US, the UK or other places?

And similar patterns hold for other groups. The Chinese IQ is the same in rural China, modern Taiwan, the US or the UK. Also, mixed race groups tend to have an IQ in the middle of the groups. Consider Mestizos in Latin America.

I wish there were a non-genetic explanation for all of this, but I can't think of one.

-JB

Gus Van Horn said...

JB,

Regarding your data and how you interpret it: I don't think so.

Gus