Some of your data seem to suggest that the more lenient pre-apartheid British rule from the first half of the twentieth century was actually the best of all for South Africa.
There are objections to Apartheid. I made some in another comment before. Namely, I thought there should have been separate governments rather than apartheid rule. I mentioned that many people might sacrifice wealth to have a society where their ethnicity has full hegemony, and where all aid and migration between countries is voluntary, reducing ethnic tensions.
Another direction of criticism he could've taken is that voting should have been based on merit-based factors rather than race specifically. However Rhodesia tried this and was still completely screwed anyway. I don't think these systems are stable.
I don't know why Lyman resorts to these arguments which only rely on strawmen and selective data interpretation. I don't even want to call him Lyin' Man, because I don't think he is lying. My suspicion is that he is just very emotional.
Your link connecting Mandela to the Communist party seems to be a lament on his death from some party organ. Is there something I'm missing on the link?
"At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party’s Central Committee."
From Wikipedia:
"Although in later life Mandela denied, for political reasons, ever being a member of the Communist Party, historical research published in 2011 strongly suggested that he had joined in the late 1950s or early 1960s.[118] This was confirmed by both the SACP and the ANC after Mandela's death. According to the SACP, he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee."
Botswana has 2.4 million people and represents less than 0.2% of sub saharan Africa's population. It's less than 1/10th as densely populated as South Africa and has insanely high natural resource per capita. All the leadership had to do is not have a civil war, which is easier to do when you've got a ton of free resources per person to hand out.
It's basically the UAE of Africa (the UAE is an apartheid state with four times the population).
Most Sub-Saharan African countries are rich in natural resources. Botswana has succeeded because its government managed those resources competently while most other SSA countries did not.
Do you deny that Botswana has a much higher resource / population ratio than most African countries? This seems easily confirmable.
Diamonds alone are 80% of botswanas exports. A lot of the eco only relies on exploiting natural resources.
If Botswana had the population of Nigeria all these sources of revenue would have to be divided by 100x. That would make them poorer and cause instability.
I'm claiming that the factor by which Botswana's natural endowment is greater than most other African countries is smaller than the factor by which Botswana's GDP per capita exceeds most other African countries.
I think the evidence supports that position but it's not as straightforwardly confirmable as you're thinking because there's no single number that captures "how many" natural resources a country has. For one thing, the more a country invests in geographical exploration for resources, the more it will find. So if a country is considered rich in resources, it might have started with a large natural endowment, or it might have had a normal natural endowment that it has spent more effort to survey.
This is related to the myth that we are "running out of oil." When people cite a number about how many years of oil are left in reserves, they're only talking about *proven* reserves, but the total amount of oil is much greater than the amount of proven reserves. People are discovering new oil reserves all the time.
I try my best to use resource/population ratios and compare different case studies.
I'm not "criticizing" what Botswana has done. I'm claiming it's not "scalable". Lots of small pop countries can put up impressive numbers by occupying "niches". Luxembourg does it. Singapore does it.
"Real scalable wealth" comes from high IQ people using their minds to create value. If you don't have the genetic endowment or you go communist, you can't do it.
I do not believe Africa can become rich. Anymore than I believe the Middle East can become rich. To the extent small little countries have done the best they can with what they got to fill niche's more power to them. It just doesn't provide a wider model to expect.
Eventually Botswana will run out of resources. Either through exploitation, pop increase, or both. When this happens the low IQ will not be able to create wealth via their mental capacities, and it will collapse. Even if they try to diversify ultimately the people running things will be low IQ and will squander everything.
Economics Explained is not a good channel. It makes really basic economic errors. For example, it has a video claiming that printing money has no downsides.
Luxembourg and Singapore don't occupy niches. They have high GDP per capita because they're city states. (In large countries, the average GDP is brought down by the relatively lower-earning rural areas).
The diamond industry makes up 30% of Botswana's GDP. That's a big chunk. But Botswana's GDP isn't 30% higher than Zimbabwe's. Botswana's GDP is 4x higher than Zimbabwe's.
You couldn't make the entire world a finance city state because the wealth of the city state relies on taking a cut from actual real countries engages in actual real wealth creation.
It would be like saying everyone in the whole world can be a hedge fund manager because hedge fund managers are rich and then we can all be rich. It doesn't work that way.
Botswana isn't in a civil war, which is a big plus! Of course it's easier to not enter a civil war when you've got a giant pile of natural resource wealth per capita to pass out to a relatively small group of people to buy them off.
The Botswana economy is a mix of natural resource extraction and tourism. It's got a 23% unemployment rate and 25% of the populace has AIDS. It's a classic middle income resource rich country with a tiny population. What lessons does it hold for SA? For Nigeria? None. It won't scale.
Would you invest in Nigeria because it's just one good set of elites away from massive GDP growth? Or would you recognize that it's a money pit you should stay away from?
I certainly think larger African countries should TRY THIER BEST to be like Botswana. But I wouldn't bet on it. I think it would be a bad investment.
In 1941, Japan was a rich and powerful country. The United States was richer and more powerful. If Japan had been poor and weak, the war would have taken four months rather than four years.
The war basically did take four months. Midway was about half a year after Pearl Harbor and the war was essentially over.
Had the Japanese won Midway and another Midway and another Midway they still would have lost the war when American subs sunk all the oil tankers and Japan didn't have the fuel to run their navy.
“ it was a change from white, relatively classically liberal rule to black communist barbarian rule. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF were of the same political faction as Mandela and his MK.”
The populist and somewhat fascistic Afrikaner regime was not comparable to the benevolent Anglo Ian Smith, who had more in common with the actually liberal Anglo opposition in South Africa represented by the United Party. Likewise Mandela wasn’t as bad as Mugabe and did set up a genuine multiethnic democracy. Rhodesia no question is a clear cut case. South Africa is more of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire”.
I know a Rhodesian whose family fled Rhodesia for South Africa, then left SA for the US, and now he’s here…watching it all happen again…
Some of your data seem to suggest that the more lenient pre-apartheid British rule from the first half of the twentieth century was actually the best of all for South Africa.
Imposition of democracy and deleterious foreign aid crippled these countries
There are objections to Apartheid. I made some in another comment before. Namely, I thought there should have been separate governments rather than apartheid rule. I mentioned that many people might sacrifice wealth to have a society where their ethnicity has full hegemony, and where all aid and migration between countries is voluntary, reducing ethnic tensions.
Another direction of criticism he could've taken is that voting should have been based on merit-based factors rather than race specifically. However Rhodesia tried this and was still completely screwed anyway. I don't think these systems are stable.
I don't know why Lyman resorts to these arguments which only rely on strawmen and selective data interpretation. I don't even want to call him Lyin' Man, because I don't think he is lying. My suspicion is that he is just very emotional.
Your link connecting Mandela to the Communist party seems to be a lament on his death from some party organ. Is there something I'm missing on the link?
From the link:
"At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party’s Central Committee."
From Wikipedia:
"Although in later life Mandela denied, for political reasons, ever being a member of the Communist Party, historical research published in 2011 strongly suggested that he had joined in the late 1950s or early 1960s.[118] This was confirmed by both the SACP and the ANC after Mandela's death. According to the SACP, he was not only a member of the party, but also served on its Central Committee."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela
A South African news article about the announcement that Mandela had been a Communist Party member all along:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160306232040/http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2013/12/06/sacp-confirms-nelson-mandela-was-a-member
Botswana has 2.4 million people and represents less than 0.2% of sub saharan Africa's population. It's less than 1/10th as densely populated as South Africa and has insanely high natural resource per capita. All the leadership had to do is not have a civil war, which is easier to do when you've got a ton of free resources per person to hand out.
It's basically the UAE of Africa (the UAE is an apartheid state with four times the population).
Most Sub-Saharan African countries are rich in natural resources. Botswana has succeeded because its government managed those resources competently while most other SSA countries did not.
Do you deny that Botswana has a much higher resource / population ratio than most African countries? This seems easily confirmable.
Diamonds alone are 80% of botswanas exports. A lot of the eco only relies on exploiting natural resources.
If Botswana had the population of Nigeria all these sources of revenue would have to be divided by 100x. That would make them poorer and cause instability.
I'm claiming that the factor by which Botswana's natural endowment is greater than most other African countries is smaller than the factor by which Botswana's GDP per capita exceeds most other African countries.
I think the evidence supports that position but it's not as straightforwardly confirmable as you're thinking because there's no single number that captures "how many" natural resources a country has. For one thing, the more a country invests in geographical exploration for resources, the more it will find. So if a country is considered rich in resources, it might have started with a large natural endowment, or it might have had a normal natural endowment that it has spent more effort to survey.
This is related to the myth that we are "running out of oil." When people cite a number about how many years of oil are left in reserves, they're only talking about *proven* reserves, but the total amount of oil is much greater than the amount of proven reserves. People are discovering new oil reserves all the time.
I try my best to use resource/population ratios and compare different case studies.
I'm not "criticizing" what Botswana has done. I'm claiming it's not "scalable". Lots of small pop countries can put up impressive numbers by occupying "niches". Luxembourg does it. Singapore does it.
"Real scalable wealth" comes from high IQ people using their minds to create value. If you don't have the genetic endowment or you go communist, you can't do it.
I do not believe Africa can become rich. Anymore than I believe the Middle East can become rich. To the extent small little countries have done the best they can with what they got to fill niche's more power to them. It just doesn't provide a wider model to expect.
Eventually Botswana will run out of resources. Either through exploitation, pop increase, or both. When this happens the low IQ will not be able to create wealth via their mental capacities, and it will collapse. Even if they try to diversify ultimately the people running things will be low IQ and will squander everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe88ckTWyTU
Economics Explained is not a good channel. It makes really basic economic errors. For example, it has a video claiming that printing money has no downsides.
Luxembourg and Singapore don't occupy niches. They have high GDP per capita because they're city states. (In large countries, the average GDP is brought down by the relatively lower-earning rural areas).
The diamond industry makes up 30% of Botswana's GDP. That's a big chunk. But Botswana's GDP isn't 30% higher than Zimbabwe's. Botswana's GDP is 4x higher than Zimbabwe's.
Their "niche" is finance/trade/tax evasion.
You couldn't make the entire world a finance city state because the wealth of the city state relies on taking a cut from actual real countries engages in actual real wealth creation.
It would be like saying everyone in the whole world can be a hedge fund manager because hedge fund managers are rich and then we can all be rich. It doesn't work that way.
Botswana isn't in a civil war, which is a big plus! Of course it's easier to not enter a civil war when you've got a giant pile of natural resource wealth per capita to pass out to a relatively small group of people to buy them off.
The Botswana economy is a mix of natural resource extraction and tourism. It's got a 23% unemployment rate and 25% of the populace has AIDS. It's a classic middle income resource rich country with a tiny population. What lessons does it hold for SA? For Nigeria? None. It won't scale.
Would you invest in Nigeria because it's just one good set of elites away from massive GDP growth? Or would you recognize that it's a money pit you should stay away from?
I certainly think larger African countries should TRY THIER BEST to be like Botswana. But I wouldn't bet on it. I think it would be a bad investment.
In 1941, Japan was a rich and powerful country. The United States was richer and more powerful. If Japan had been poor and weak, the war would have taken four months rather than four years.
Japan was still quite poor relative to Western Europe and America.
Sure I was just nitpicking.
The war basically did take four months. Midway was about half a year after Pearl Harbor and the war was essentially over.
Had the Japanese won Midway and another Midway and another Midway they still would have lost the war when American subs sunk all the oil tankers and Japan didn't have the fuel to run their navy.
That would be news to the Marines at Iwo Jima and Tarawa.
“ it was a change from white, relatively classically liberal rule to black communist barbarian rule. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF were of the same political faction as Mandela and his MK.”
The populist and somewhat fascistic Afrikaner regime was not comparable to the benevolent Anglo Ian Smith, who had more in common with the actually liberal Anglo opposition in South Africa represented by the United Party. Likewise Mandela wasn’t as bad as Mugabe and did set up a genuine multiethnic democracy. Rhodesia no question is a clear cut case. South Africa is more of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire”.