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Well you are looking at it the wrong way. In order to gauge a society, especially developed society one has to look at their history because that's where the lion lies. Those country that are developed now at certain times were/are pretty barbaric and/or conservative societies in their time. Basically all of Europe and North America. How long can Europe and North America keep riding the Welfare State. Europe is showing some cracks or big cracks in their liberal system. They are only afloat because huge amount of paper money being produced on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nations as well as people have a normal cycle of development. It just happen that today developed society were first in the game but it does not guarantee they will be first tomorrow.
Does anyone else notice that almost all Third World countries have very conservative societies whereas almost all First world countries tend to have societies that are liberal?
I've noticed that almost all Third World countries are black and brown, whereas almost all First World countries are white and East Asian.
Human societies almost always tend towards the conservative.
Meaning human beings consistently construct societies that work to benefit some people at the expense of many other people, and this state of affairs is always presented as the natural order of things.
The thinking in conservative societies is always that the people at the top deserve to be there and the people at the bottom deserve what they get.
And conservatives truly believe this. Think about the kind of society one would construct if one believed that the people at the top were rightfully there and the people at the bottom were deserving losers.
Your whole society would work to benefit those deserving winners and ignore or punish those deserving losers.
This is the fundamental basis of conservatism, this exclusion and dehumanization of the other in society in favor of the elite.
And again the vast majority of human societies tend to function in this manner on a scale. With more liberal societies expanding that pool of citizens society should work for, while conservative societies work to exhault the winners and punish the losers.
Fundamentally, a society loses when it's people lose. This is what conservatives fail to get.
If a society's citizens are struggling, it means your society is failing those citizens.
Liberal societies tend to attempt to address the societal failures of its citizens.
conservative governments tend to say people get what they deserve. So screw those losers.
This kind of thinking from conservatives leads to stigmatizing whole sections of your society as losers, failures, people to be avoided, controlled and policed.
Basically. If you want your country to end up third world, keep voting conservative. That is where America is headed. We are on the right-wing train to the abyss.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kreutz
I've noticed that almost all Third World countries are black and brown, whereas almost all First World countries are white and East Asian.
Why is that?
European imperialism might have something to do with it (read a history book)
Correlation doesn't imply causation - in the absence of any other data, third-world status causing conservatism is just as likely as conservatism causing third-world status. Otherwise one could easily make the argument that all the first-world societies are the way they are today because they're White or East Asian - just look, all the developed countries are White or East Asian and were never conquered by other races, whereas South Asians, Blacks, and other racial groups form the third world and were unable to successfully resist European conquest, so that obviously proves that NAMs are an inferior race .
I think the liberalism of developed countries is in large part due to geography; liberal philosophy, in the sense of equality in liberty, was discovered in and spread all over the Anglophone world and central/western Europe, which include most first world countries today. Singapore is socially conservative, even repressive, yet they are one of the richest countries in the world. What correlates best with development and fits into a plausible causative mechanism is economic freedom. Undeveloped and backward countries universally have do not observe the rule of law, have rampant corruption in government, and even if you get past all that, the laws they do have violate economic freedom. With a complete absence of anything resembling a free-market system protected by the rule of law, people are obstructed from the production and free exchange that is so necessary to build a developed economy, as it did in every currently developed country. That's where the liberalism-development correlation comes from - the bulk of liberal societies have high economic freedom, and the bulk of conservative societies have low economic freedom.
The definitions in this study do not correlate with first-world conservative ideologies, which usually incorporate a high level of economic freedom, so adopting conservatism as Westerners understand it is no barrier to a country's development. Also, it should be noted that wealth is correlated to liberalism in the U.S.*, but that is not true in many other developed countries, where the right-wing base is in the wealthier areas. Northern Italy is a prime example. Even in America, there are many affluent suburbs that are consistently deep red on the political map.
*Even there it's more dubious than it appears at first glance, seeing as blue states have a significantly higher cost of living. Adjusting for the cost of living index gives you a good picture of actual purchasing power of states' incomes. Of the 10 highest-income states, six are blue states (MD, NJ, DE, CT, MA, WA), one is a swing state (VA), and three are red states (UT, WY, NE). Most of the ten poorest states are red states, but they're also mostly Southern states. Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska form part of what I call the "non-southern red states" (NSRS); the South has unique historical disadvantages that are uncorrelated to whether they vote red or blue, and the NSRS are starkly better in income, quality of life, and quality of government management than any part of the South, so for analysis I separate out the South from the rest of the pack.
It is true that the happiest people in the world live in countries that are:
1. Socially liberal
2. Provide a generous economic safety net for their citizens
I think you need to be careful when making assumptions about cause and effect. Are social safety-nets the cause of happiness? If that is the case, you could easily throw up social safety-nets in third-world countries, and then they will be happy and prosperous, right?
Another good example is unions. If unions are so great and wonderful, and bring people out of poverty. Then all you need to do is go to Pakistan and unionize the entire population, and things will instantly get better, right?
Look, economic safety-nets are really a consequence of social trust. Social trust creates stability. Stability tends to create economic development. And a combination of social trust, stability, and economic development creates happiness.
Social safety-nets are a consequence of social trust. Because even in the absence of the existence of government, social trust would create these same social safety-nets. Social trust means that families, communities, churches, and charities would always provide for the needy. Because they would trust each other and see each other as being "the same people".
The reason you can't create government-based social safety-nets in the countries that don't have them already. Is because the people there don't trust each other(and for good reason). They don't see each other as fundamentally the same people(those countries are tribal). As a result, it is very common for one group to take advantage of the other groups. Or at least to appear to take advantage of other groups(which was the primary cause of anti-Semitism in Europe).
That kind of environment creates hatred and resentment. Which creates more instability. Which creates violence and chaos. Which destabilizes economies.
Look at it like this. I think if America was almost all white and Northern European. It would have had a single-payer healthcare system a long time ago. The lack of trust between different groups of people in this country is what causes the lack of trust in our government. Americans don't really see each other as being the same people. And for good reason, we are not the same people. And we are becoming less and less the same people all the time.
In my view, the only reason why America is still a single country, is because economically it still makes sense. The moment the economy starts to falter, the fault lines in America become apparent, and at some point in the future, the United States will break apart.
I am personally looking forward to it. And I think you should be as well.
Correlation doesn't imply causation - in the absence of any other data, third-world status causing conservatism is just as likely as conservatism causing third-world status.
Well, to understand this situation, you need to understand human psychology.
First, we need to understand that without a functioning government, people tend to turn to religion. Throughout most of history, religion has been the de-facto "social safety-net". It was the center of all communities, and it was the uniting force that bound people together. In a sense, religion is sort of the precursor to the "nation-state".
If there suddenly was no government tomorrow. This country would become far far far more religious. Because religious centers would become the organization for a disorganized world. The elderly, the poor, and the disabled who require charity. Will almost certainly receive most, if not all of that charity through religious organizations. And there would be a considerable increase in the number of people volunteering to help people.
Basically, any nation which lacks effective government will be highly religious. And any nation that is strongly religious, is going to be "socially-conservative".
When it comes to wealth, as you mentioned, the great wealth of the world comes from economic freedom.
The United States for most of its history, was incredibly socially-conservative. In fact, America is probably the most socially-conservative "first-world" country. But America grew faster than basically any other country in the world when it was socially-conservative.
Why? Because social policy has basically zero effect on economic growth. Economic freedom is the driver of economic growth. And every economist has been saying the same thing since at least 1776, with Adam Smith's book, Wealth of Nations.
Massachusetts at one time, was probably the most conservative part of America. In fact, New England in general was incredibly conservative for much of this nation's history.
What we need to be careful about doing, is assuming that since a part of the country is liberal and wealthy. That the liberal policies are what made it that way.
For instance, California at one time was one of the most conservative states in this country. During the dust bowl, they had people going to the California border to keep the "Okies" and other farmers from the Midwest from migrating to California. California even had laws that prevented Asians and other groups from owning land in California.
Basically, California started out conservative, then became successful. That success created wealth, and as a result of that wealth. People came to California from all over the country. And once they got there, they wanted their share of the wealth. And so people began to vote for more of that wealth. In the end, California became liberal as a consequence of its success, not as the source of its success.
It always reminds me of the quote by Will Rogers(a native Oklahoman, and part Cherokee-Indian like myself).
"When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states."
"Every guy just looks in his own pocket and then votes. And the funny part of it is that it's the last year of an administration that counts. [A president] can have three bad ones and then wind up with everybody having money in the fourth, and the incumbent will win so far he needn't even stay up to hear the returns. Conditions win elections, not speeches."
"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
"Our foreign policy is an open book—a checkbook."
"The income tax has made more liars out of Americans than golf."
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