To: TimF who wrote (617 ) 10/17/2006 10:05:01 AM From: Frank A. Coluccio Read Replies (1) | Respond to Hi Tim,marginalrevolution.com Message 22831068 amazon.com "To summarize 2.5 million years of economy history in brief: for a very, very, very long time not much happened; then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. It took 99.4% of economic history to reach the wealth levels of the Yanomamo (fac: one of the few remaining examples of tribal life led by hunter-gatherers in the Amazon region, near-totally unaffected by modern "civilization"), 0.59% to double that level by 1750, and then just 0.01% for global wealth to leap to the levels of the modern world. Another way to think of it is that over 97% of humanity's wealth was created in just the last 0.01% of our history. As the economic historian David Landes describes it, "the Englishman of 1750 was closer in material things to Caesar's legionnaires than to his own great grandchildren." tres a propos to this discussion, don't you think? Is there anything, after reading the passage above, that jumps off the page leading one to begin inferring why some peoples of the world don't "take" very readily, much less very kindly, to the expectations that are set by others who are of an outside cultural persuasion? And, if they do momentarily adapt to relatively robotic roles when forced or cajoled by oppressive means, why those roles may not be self-sustaining on a free-running basis? Through examining the latter questions one may begin to infer where my thought processes have taken me in response to why certain locales, or regions, of the world that did not advance their civilizations through their own spoken and written legacies, and who did not engage in an evolution of global trading (implying, through the use of skills and technologies that they developed and used), are not adapting to the rigors of modern economic life as many on the planet would wish. Thoughts?
