Red Hat

Gold Tooth

Industrial Pollution

Locksmith Newark

If “all of the poverty or wealth of nations can be explained by distance from the Equator” then air conditioning is the great equalizer.

Note the rise of many countries – Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, or even Arizon after the common availability of air conditioning.

While I do not mean to discount the importance of AC, Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamians were all capable of “sustained mental concentration” in their respective hod (but arid) climates. Ditto for the Central American civiliztions…

How about this for an explanation: countries farther from the equator have less poor people because they have a phenomenon called “winter” that has been wiping out the very poor for centuries. Here in Brazil hundreds of thousands of people live in cardboard shacks. In the city where I live, if the temperature dropped to sub-zero for 48 hours, around 50% of the population would probably die. Warm countries have more poverty because they are better able to sustain large populations of extremely poor people.

Some of the economic theories you’ve posted, ie, east-west continental orientation are quite interseting. However, I would ask this: What animals did the early American settlerts wi[e out that we migh better have domesticated?
Like your site and your link to some good picture art.
NH

If you change “stable government” to “entrenched lower class with no social mobility who have no choice but to continue to contribute to whatever hack places himself in the role of the president/emperor/king, and with a massive military presence that keeps invaders with less efficient methods of subjugation from screwing up the labor potential”, I’ll go with Philip’s theory.

The location theories are all a bit kooky, because as one poster mentioned, the n=4 and they all have to invent something offhand to explain Africa’s low place in industrial history. Any attempt to explain Africa in terms of its geography is fruitless (unless there’s a “southern hemisphere” explanation. I mean, Africa is huge, and does contain deserts and savannas in its interior, but the damn continent stretches across the equator and down to the Cape, has just massive amounts of coast, and plenty of arable land (you don’t see much farming in Arizona but that doesn’t mean the whole continent is barren).

So I’ll throw out one more twist that would further refine the stable government/entrenched labor force theory- maybe what you need is a stable, reasonably universal RELIGEON. Not necessarily top-to-bottom, but something to tell the peasants that they don’t need to rebel, they’ll get their reward in non-tangible ways, and that their place on this earth is fixed by the divine.

Phil you should do an iPodcast. Record your own little radio show and then post it online.