Completely disagree with all of this. You have dirt poor illiterate Vietnamese moving to Queens or San Francisco and their kids are out competing everyone in the first generation, same thing happened with other ethnic groups in previous generations. As for oil and gas, the reason why countries like Mexico and Nigeria don’t thrive with their resources but Norway does is 100% because of culture.
The blank slate is nonsense, you should read Pinker and Sowell.
I’m not sure how you read this and inferred “blank-slate” thinking.
My argument is the opposite: people often retrofit culture as an explanation after countries get rich, not before. A society is labeled “inferior,” then once it grows, culture is suddenly re-described as the cause... that’s post-hoc reasoning, not blank slatism.
Blank slatism assumes equal underlying capabilities with disparities caused by environment alone. I don’t believe that, and I didn’t argue it. You’re imputing assumptions I never made. I’ve read Pinker and Sowell as well.
Separately, “having oil” by itself doesn’t explain outcomes if resource rents per capita are low. Nigeria has 200+ million people and exported roughly $61B in oil and gas in 2023. The UAE exports around $110B with ~10 million people. Qatar exports about $90B with under 3 million people.
That difference matters. UAE and Qatar export far more hydrocarbons per person. That’s not culture...it’s arithmetic. Smaller populations with larger export bases generate far more fiscal capacity per capita.
This is just basic math: exporting more oil and gas with fewer people gives you more leverage with resource rents.
I responded to the core of your argument with my point about oil exports per capita with UAE and Qatar. Its the same with Norway too. Norway exports $120B with under 6M people while Nigeria exports 60B with 200M people. Norway literally gets more bang for its buck.
Also Norway industrialized before it discovered oil. But the point is having oil & gas exports per capita like Nigeria of $300 per person is nothing compared to noway exporting $20K per person.
Why do poor Vietnamese kids outperform other groups of Americans? Why are the Nigerian and Mexican state oil companies corrupt but not Norway’s? I think the answer is culture, I don’t think GDP or oil production per capita has anything to do with it.
If it's "culture" all the way down that explains outcomes, why do Ghanaian-Americans out perform many immigrant groups despite being a crappier country?
From personal experience as a Ghanaian-American, most immigrant groups have very similar behavior (pre-studying textbooks, prioritizing reading, etc).
If culture was so fixed, the behavior wouldnt be so cross cultural and it would explain outcomes between immigrant groups, and yet you have Ghanaians and Nigerians outperform immigrant groups from countries far richer than it.
This is a terrific summary of differentiated paths to development. Would love to integrate more political economic factors in these explanations, each of these policy pathways are deeply impacted by the prevailing political settlements between business interests and political players.
How are incentives different from culture different from institutions? It would seem that all of them suffer from post hoc attribution as the source of success. And of course the “How Asia Works” model raises the question of how those countries in Asia came to have leadership who could implement those policies in the first place.
Thank you for another well researched informative post.
Completely disagree with all of this. You have dirt poor illiterate Vietnamese moving to Queens or San Francisco and their kids are out competing everyone in the first generation, same thing happened with other ethnic groups in previous generations. As for oil and gas, the reason why countries like Mexico and Nigeria don’t thrive with their resources but Norway does is 100% because of culture.
The blank slate is nonsense, you should read Pinker and Sowell.
I’m not sure how you read this and inferred “blank-slate” thinking.
My argument is the opposite: people often retrofit culture as an explanation after countries get rich, not before. A society is labeled “inferior,” then once it grows, culture is suddenly re-described as the cause... that’s post-hoc reasoning, not blank slatism.
Blank slatism assumes equal underlying capabilities with disparities caused by environment alone. I don’t believe that, and I didn’t argue it. You’re imputing assumptions I never made. I’ve read Pinker and Sowell as well.
Separately, “having oil” by itself doesn’t explain outcomes if resource rents per capita are low. Nigeria has 200+ million people and exported roughly $61B in oil and gas in 2023. The UAE exports around $110B with ~10 million people. Qatar exports about $90B with under 3 million people.
That difference matters. UAE and Qatar export far more hydrocarbons per person. That’s not culture...it’s arithmetic. Smaller populations with larger export bases generate far more fiscal capacity per capita.
This is just basic math: exporting more oil and gas with fewer people gives you more leverage with resource rents.
Ok it’s not blank slate thinking, but that was not the core of my disagreement, do you have any responses to that?
I responded to the core of your argument with my point about oil exports per capita with UAE and Qatar. Its the same with Norway too. Norway exports $120B with under 6M people while Nigeria exports 60B with 200M people. Norway literally gets more bang for its buck.
Also Norway industrialized before it discovered oil. But the point is having oil & gas exports per capita like Nigeria of $300 per person is nothing compared to noway exporting $20K per person.
Why do poor Vietnamese kids outperform other groups of Americans? Why are the Nigerian and Mexican state oil companies corrupt but not Norway’s? I think the answer is culture, I don’t think GDP or oil production per capita has anything to do with it.
Why do Ghanaian-americans ($82.758K) outperform israeli-americans($82.436K) or why do Nigerian Americans out-earn french americans?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_race_and_ethnicity
If it's "culture" all the way down that explains outcomes, why do Ghanaian-Americans out perform many immigrant groups despite being a crappier country?
From personal experience as a Ghanaian-American, most immigrant groups have very similar behavior (pre-studying textbooks, prioritizing reading, etc).
If culture was so fixed, the behavior wouldnt be so cross cultural and it would explain outcomes between immigrant groups, and yet you have Ghanaians and Nigerians outperform immigrant groups from countries far richer than it.
Stop bingeing Sowelll videos on YouTube, Pete. Understand how causality works in social sciences first.
This is a terrific summary of differentiated paths to development. Would love to integrate more political economic factors in these explanations, each of these policy pathways are deeply impacted by the prevailing political settlements between business interests and political players.
How are incentives different from culture different from institutions? It would seem that all of them suffer from post hoc attribution as the source of success. And of course the “How Asia Works” model raises the question of how those countries in Asia came to have leadership who could implement those policies in the first place.