Unfortunately for ElM's catch up idea, Smart Fraction Theory shows that they can't catch up. ElM's idea is based on the fungibility of humans which is false. Even a cursory glance at people from birth shows that humans are not fungible.
<If everyone adopts the innovations that caused the industrial revolution and subsequent growth then in the end they'd all catch up to the leaders (or at least be a lot closer depending on your economic growth theory) and relative importance globally would be closer to relative population. I think this is what Elmat means by "Natural Size". >
No matter how many decades I might try, I cannot compete in String Theory, CDMA development, solid state physics and so on. We had a neighbour in Antwerp who was a solid state physicist. I looked at his pages of maths and would not have been able to make sense of it even if I spent years getting up to speed. Even if I did get up to understanding it, I would not have been able to then zoom to the front and become the leader. People can learn to drive cars, but that's a lot different from designing them so well that competitors are impressed. It's not that I was ignorant of maths having done more than my share of pretty good maths at university.
The proportion of Africans who could do what he did is near zero. A significant proportion of north east Asians would be capable of getting up to speed but I'm not sure they have the innovative talents for over-taking and leading the way. Lots of Ashkenazis have the brain power and that's why they are up the Nobel Prize leader board.
The solution is for Africans to grow coffee, me and ElM to do mid level work [along with most people], and for us all to supply the brains of the outfit to lift humanity to better things. That's more or less what happens, though geopolitical power seeking interrupts the process at times [Zimbabwe, Japanese and German militarism, Maoistic mania etc being such examples].
If "catching up" worked, the world would already have "caught up", so, ipso facto, catching up is false. As Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and China have shown, by doing things a lot better, or just less badly, they can get up to their rated Smart Fraction position. But getting beyond that would be tough going and require adoption of Libertarian philosophies, and there's no chance of that happening.
Mqurice |
