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Old 05-03-2013, 07:27 AM
 
Location: Montreal
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The core anglophone countries like the US/Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and the UK have quite robust institutions with more rule of law and stability and less corruption, stemming mainly from British common law. (Arguably, countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and those in Scandinavia have comparably robust institutions, albeit under Napoleonic civil law.) On the other hand, certain Latin American countries (Chile and Costa Rica in particular) have often been noted for their political stability and strong institutions relative to the rest of Latin America, originating in the fact that their populations have been largely white (despite also having some indigenous blood; not to be racist at all) and were isolated from the main centres of Spanish American power; in Chile and Costa Rica, this relative stability did not come directly from anglophone influence like in the anglophone countries. In those countries, there has been less political instability and fewer dictatorships and civil wars than in Argentina, Mexico, etc. but somewhat more than in the Anglo countries after the US Civil War, like the 1948 civil war in Costa Rica and the 1973-90 Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. (There have been strong institutions as well in Uruguay since the early 20th century, but that country was wracked by civil war before that; in the mid- and late-19th century, it was Brazil that was noted for stability and things like that.) Whenever I address, in forums, the consequences of a successful early-19th-century invasion of Buenos Aires and how an Argentina with more British institutions and settlers would have been much better off than real-life Argentina (cf. Canada or Australia, also temperate-zone countries with light indigenous populations), people often retort how Chile or Costa Rica has managed to pull it off one way or another without being colonized by the British. Any thoughts on all of this?
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Old 05-03-2013, 08:34 AM
 
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uh....white good, brown bad?
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Old 05-03-2013, 12:05 PM
 
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1) why talk about race if it's not your main point?
2) why Chile and Costa Rica vs. the others? Chile and Argentina are directly comparable on many levels (GDP per capita, HDI, etc), Costa Rica and Panama are comparable, etc. what's your 'rule of law'/corruption ranking and why the premium on it?

there have been many many studies on the link between legal origins and socio-economic outcomes but I don't think any of them have ever been able to address endogeneity. your premise seems to be that every country in the world would be wealthier today (or that corruption would be lower everywhere??) if the British Empire had conquered the whole world. somehow that's not what economic theory would suggest.
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Old 05-03-2013, 01:21 PM
 
Location: Montreal
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theunbrainwashed View Post
uh....white good, brown bad?
Again, I'm not being racist - I'm just stating a fact. The way that colonial history has been is that Europeans tended to be more powerful and/or wealthy in a lot of places they would colonize, and non-Europeans (whether they were of African, Indian, or other extraction) tended to be slaves, servants, or other kinds of subalterns, or descendants thereof (even if they were free people themselves). In those places, many non-whites were severely mistreated. Even in places like India where non-white civilizations were powerful before the coming of the Europeans, such civilizations were irrevocably redirected (at least economically) towards European interests once the Europeans came in; as an example, the Indian cotton industry was severely impacted by the British Raj when the British cotton industry became favoured. Some non-whites have moved up to the middle or even upper classes more recently, but even today, many non-white groups are disproportionately represented in sobering statistics like prisoners per capita, welfare recipients per capita, etc. Granted, even historically, there have been, say, black or Amerindian elites, but those were pretty small portions of those populations.

What I'm trying to say is that the reason why places with a lot of white people tend to be wealthier (though not absolutely always the case) than places with a lot of people of colour is NOT because of the characteristics of white vs. non-white people, but rather because of the historical circumstances of whites and non-whites. I very much believe in individual rights for people of colour every bit as much as for white people, and I believe that brown and black people are just as good as white people!
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Old 05-03-2013, 01:28 PM
 
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
5,900 posts, read 10,478,287 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yofie View Post
The core anglophone countries like the US/Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and the UK have quite robust institutions with more rule of law and stability and less corruption, stemming mainly from British common law. (Arguably, countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, and those in Scandinavia have comparably robust institutions, albeit under Napoleonic civil law.) On the other hand, certain Latin American countries (Chile and Costa Rica in particular) have often been noted for their political stability and strong institutions relative to the rest of Latin America, originating in the fact that their populations have been largely white (despite also having some indigenous blood; not to be racist at all) and were isolated from the main centres of Spanish American power; in Chile and Costa Rica, this relative stability did not come directly from anglophone influence like in the anglophone countries. In those countries, there has been less political instability and fewer dictatorships and civil wars than in Argentina, Mexico, etc. but somewhat more than in the Anglo countries after the US Civil War, like the 1948 civil war in Costa Rica and the 1973-90 Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. (There have been strong institutions as well in Uruguay since the early 20th century, but that country was wracked by civil war before that; in the mid- and late-19th century, it was Brazil that was noted for stability and things like that.) Whenever I address, in forums, the consequences of a successful early-19th-century invasion of Buenos Aires and how an Argentina with more British institutions and settlers would have been much better off than real-life Argentina (cf. Canada or Australia, also temperate-zone countries with light indigenous populations), people often retort how Chile or Costa Rica has managed to pull it off one way or another without being colonized by the British. Any thoughts on all of this?

Not true. Argentina is considerably whiter than Chile and see how screwed up it is. Actually, Argentina is the whitest country in LatinAmerica and that didnt stop it for being chaotic and screwed up since forever.

Colour haves nothing to do with it.
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Old 05-03-2013, 02:36 PM
 
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Originally Posted by SophieLL View Post
Not true. Argentina is considerably whiter than Chile and see how screwed up it is. Actually, Argentina is the whitest country in LatinAmerica and that didnt stop it for being chaotic and screwed up since forever.

Colour haves nothing to do with it.
Argentina, I believe, is as white as eastern Europe if I remember correctly. In other words, one of the whitest countries in the world. There was also a time, in the early 1900s I believe, that Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world but after WWI and/or WWII, Argentina entered into long term decline which they are just getting out of today.

Quote:
Originally Posted by yofie View Post
Again, I'm not being racist - I'm just stating a fact. The way that colonial history has been is that Europeans tended to be more powerful and/or wealthy in a lot of places they would colonize, and non-Europeans (whether they were of African, Indian, or other extraction) tended to be slaves, servants, or other kinds of subalterns, or descendants thereof (even if they were free people themselves). In those places, many non-whites were severely mistreated. Even in places like India where non-white civilizations were powerful before the coming of the Europeans, such civilizations were irrevocably redirected (at least economically) towards European interests once the Europeans came in; as an example, the Indian cotton industry was severely impacted by the British Raj when the British cotton industry became favoured. Some non-whites have moved up to the middle or even upper classes more recently, but even today, many non-white groups are disproportionately represented in sobering statistics like prisoners per capita, welfare recipients per capita, etc. Granted, even historically, there have been, say, black or Amerindian elites, but those were pretty small portions of those populations.

What I'm trying to say is that the reason why places with a lot of white people tend to be wealthier (though not absolutely always the case) than places with a lot of people of colour is NOT because of the characteristics of white vs. non-white people, but rather because of the historical circumstances of whites and non-whites. I very much believe in individual rights for people of colour every bit as much as for white people, and I believe that brown and black people are just as good as white people!
Ok, I get what you mean now. Then, it's not about the color of people's skin that determined the economic outcome of the ex colonies. It was the political and cultural system that was left behind.
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Old 05-03-2013, 03:53 PM
 
Location: Montreal
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theunbrainwashed View Post
Argentina, I believe, is as white as eastern Europe if I remember correctly. In other words, one of the whitest countries in the world. There was also a time, in the early 1900s I believe, that Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world but after WWI and/or WWII, Argentina entered into long term decline which they are just getting out of today.



Ok, I get what you mean now. Then, it's not about the color of people's skin that determined the economic outcome of the ex colonies. It was the political and cultural system that was left behind.
Exactly!
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Old 05-03-2013, 04:03 PM
 
Location: Somewhere on the Moon.
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Chile has a good deal of German influence due to German immigration there. If you notice on the last name of their top politicians you will notice this. Chile also received a significant (by Latin American standards) British migration. The descendants of Germans and British have often risen to the top of that society in whatever field they set out to achieve success.

More than race, I think the issue is simply cultural.

I don't know much about Costa Rica to comment. What I do know is that in the last few decades Costa Rica has seen an influx of large numbers of Nicaraguans and now that country is beginning to suffer from some of the woes that is much more typical for Central American countries. Many Ticos (as Costa Ricans like to be called) blame this on the Nicaraguan.

I think they might be partly right, but also there's probably something else going on.
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Old 05-05-2013, 07:41 AM
 
Location: Montreal
829 posts, read 1,239,724 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AntonioR View Post
Chile has a good deal of German influence due to German immigration there. If you notice on the last name of their top politicians you will notice this. Chile also received a significant (by Latin American standards) British migration. The descendants of Germans and British have often risen to the top of that society in whatever field they set out to achieve success.

More than race, I think the issue is simply cultural.
But Argentina also got lots of German and British immigration, and yet, Argentina has been overall much more corrupt than Chile, with a more dysfunctional economy!
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Old 05-05-2013, 11:27 AM
 
Location: Somewhere on the Moon.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yofie View Post
But Argentina also got lots of German and British immigration, and yet, Argentina has been overall much more corrupt than Chile, with a more dysfunctional economy!
Percentage wise there are more Chileans of German/British descent than Argentinians, despite Argentina probably absorbing more Germans/British immigrants as a whole.

Percentage is very important, because it gives a clear hint on the weight a certain ethnic group can have in molding an entire nation, especially if certain ethnicities make up a substantial proportion of the upper and upper-middle classes. These last two classes are very important because in pretty much all countries, they are the one's that set the tone for an entire nation.

A good example of this would be Hawaii, which is not an independent nation, but it is a good example. The vast majority of the population in that U.S. state are not descendants of Anglo Saxons, but the ruling families of Hawaii (at least the traditional ruling families) are all descendants of the Christian missionaries that arrived from Massachusetts when Hawaii was an independent kingdom. This small group of Anglo Saxon, Protestant Americans organized and made a coup d'etat that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and established a new government with the American families on top. They then dominated Hawaiian society and changed the society by injecting American cultural values (including pushing English as the language that everyone should speak.) They, in conjunction with the U.S. government, didn't allowed the Hawaiian population to vote on whether they wanted to become a state of the Union, until enough pro-American propaganda had been pushed down the throats of the local population, making them feel more like Americans and less like Hawaiians. When it was clear that Hawaiians were favoring annexation by the U.S., the voting session was made and not surprisingly, Hawaii became one more state of the USA.

If you go to Hawaii today, you will notice plenty of native Hawaiian influences as well as other foreign influence that the Americans introduced, such as the Japanese and Puerto Rican influences. But the culture that holds everything together is the American culture which is the culture of the ruling elite of Hawaii, almost all white Anglo Saxon families that originated in Massachusetts. The imprint of this very small group of families that rule Hawaii (the Dole family is one of them, yes they are the people of Dole Pineapples and the well known politician Bob Dole is a part of that family too) is much greater than anything else in that society in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

So coming back to the Argentina issue, they may have received more German and British immigration than Chile, but as a percentage Chile probably has much more weight from those groups. Argentina is overwhelmingly of Spanish and Italian descent, especially at its upper and upper-middle classes, and this is evident by the way Argentina looks, feels, and developed.

Brazil probably received as many, if not more, German immigrants than did either Argentina or Chile; but that migration was not strong enough as a percentage of the Brazilian population to have a marked effect on the overall organization of Brazilian society, with the exception of the small areas where Germans did dominate the demographics, mostly in some parts of southeastern Brazil.
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