I’m saying that Appalachia is more like a third world country than other parts of the US, and drawing an inference about what the US would be like if Appalachians had populated the whole country.
Furthermore, you've made a very strange pivot: first you were talking about how "it’s been eye opening to watch the aftermath of the 1960s social revolution", but now you're talking about "what the US would be like if Appalachians had populated the whole country". The former and the latter seem to have very little or nothing to do with each other.
It's also pretty weird that you contrast for example Germans and Appalachians, because "Germans were a major pioneer group to migrate to Appalachia". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia
And: "Since its recognition as a distinctive region in the late 19th century, Appalachia has been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the isolation, temperament, and behavior of its inhabitants."
Sure, but that’s besides the point. Countries can fail to develop for many different reasons. Third world countries, like the one I’m from, have different cultural problems. It’s hard to climb out of that well. But you can compare a more individualistic subgroup of Americans to other subgroups that are in broadly similar circumstances and draw an inference.
The 1960s social revolution turned up the individual self determination aspect of American culture to 11. Seeking pleasure, prioritizing personal satisfaction, rejecting social rules in favor of individualized morality, etc. That individualist streak has always been latent in American culture, but it’s most apparent in Appalachia. For example, even 100 years ago Appalachians had higher rates of multiple marriages than the rest of the country: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-appalachian-go-round-family-i...
There were lots of German immigrants in Appalachia, but they didn’t build the place the way they did the Midwest. Many went to established cities like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
The distinctive culture of Appalachia isn’t a “myth.” For reasons tracing all the way back to the types of British immigrants who founded the place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed.
As Lee Kuan Yew says, culture is destiny: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923. If you want to understand what works and what doesn’t, look at the culture of the people who made things work contrasted against the people who didn’t.
Um, ok, here's a tip: if you want to be understood, maybe try using words like everyone else uses them, instead of repurposing existing words with your own private definitions?
> That makes it impossible to develop government and rule of law. [You seem to have deleted this sentence in editing.]
In other words, we're doing a lot right, otherwise we wouldn't attract so many immigrants, and thus our culture isn't as bad as it's portrayed by, ironically, immigrants.
> That individualist streak has always been latent in American culture, but it’s most apparent in Appalachia.
I... am speechless. I don't know how to respond to this, at least without saying something that will get me downvoted or flagged. So I guess our conversation may be over.
> For example, even 100 years ago Appalachians had higher rates of multiple marriages than the rest of the country
From your own linked article: "Whether this was due to divorce or higher mortality, I can’t say".
Also: "Even with these higher divorce rates, the share of Appalachian women currently married is nonetheless higher than women in the rest of the US."
Your article doesn't even show what you seem to want it to show.
> There were lots of German immigrants in Appalachia, but they didn’t build the place the way they did the Midwest.
I'm a lifelong Midwesterner. There's a very strong, deep rooted progressive streak in the Midwest, for example in Wisconsin and Minnesota, notably, which both have large populations of German ancestry. Frankly, your comments seem to be imbued with with overgeneralization and stereotypes.
A major reason why divorce rates have increased in the past 50+ years is that over this time period, women have achieved a great deal of financial independence from men. They don't have to be married anymore. They have more choices, can be more selective. This is, I would say, good. I don't want to go back to a past where women were subservient.
Referring to the law standard of living is the common usage of the term "third world country." Nobody is referring to alignment vis-a-vis NATO and the USSR.
> In other words, we're doing a lot right, otherwise we wouldn't attract so many immigrants, and thus our culture isn't as bad as it's portrayed by, ironically, immigrants.
We immigrated to the America of Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The country is still riding the inertia of that. Moreover, immigrants are generally insulated from the larger culture. Affluent, educated immigrants can count on joining the top quantile, where as the article observes marriage norms remain strong. And whether affluent or not, immigrants have their own communities with their own social structures. Rampant divorce in Oregon doesn't affect Bangladeshis in Queens.
> I'm a lifelong Midwesterner. There's a very strong, deep rooted progressive streak in the Midwest, for example in Wisconsin and Minnesota, notably, which both have large populations of German ancestry.
Yes, but it's mainly a collectivist form of economic progressivism. As we saw with 2012-2016 shifts, when cultural issues predominate, the alignment runs in the other direction.
> A major reason why divorce rates have increased in the past 50+ years is that over this time period, women have achieved a great deal of financial independence from men.
Except the women who have the most potential for independence have the highest marriage rates. The marriage rate of people in the top quantile is the same today as it was in 1979: https://www.brookings.edu/research/middle-class-marriage-is-.... Marriage rates for women with a bachelor's degree were pretty close to those without a high school disagree in 1968: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/08.... Today, marriage rates in the former group have dropped about 10 percentage points, but have been stable since the mid 1980s. (If you account for the fact that way more people have bachelors degrees today, there might not be much real change at all.) Meanwhile, marriage rates for the other groups have dropped 20-30 points and are still declining.
The data supports an alternative hypothesis. Social norms around marriage and taboos against divorce function as guard-rails that encourage normal people to do something that's good for them--getting and staying married. High-IQ, high impulse control people (the folks who go to college and end up in the top 20%) don't need those social guard rails, and have done fine without them. That is consistent with other social trends too--for example, college educated people are far less likely to be obese than everyone else.
You actually said you were were from a third world country in an earlier comment, though you deleted that bit soon thereafter.
Regardless, the point you still seem to be avoiding is that the US does much better economically than many other countries (whatever you want to call them), so there seems to be no empirical support for the idea that the cultures of those other countries are superior economically to the US culture, or that the current US culture will somehow result in a low standard of living.
> We immigrated to the America of Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The country is still riding the inertia of that.
I understand that you don't approve of the social changes that started in the 1960s, but it's now more than 50 years since the 1960s, so where is the economic doom, the low standard of living, that you suppose is caused by these social changes? When exactly do you predict that to happen? It appears to me that "still riding the inertia" is a convenient way of shrugging off the lack of empirical support for your belief.
I see that you've now dropped your discussion of Appalachia, which is probably for the best, because the equation of that with 1960s social changes has always seemed totally bizarre and nonsensical to me.
> Yes, but it's mainly a collectivist form of economic progressivism.
So you claim. I guess it's necessary for you to spin it that way to support your other beliefs.
> As we saw with 2012-2016 shifts, when cultural issues predominate, the alignment runs in the other direction.
I'm not sure what you mean by "shifts" or "alignment". I'd have to guess you're referring to elections, which are often decided by razor thin margins, then wrongly interpreted as significant cultural shifts.
> Except the women who have the most potential for independence have the highest marriage rates.
That's rather easy to explain: those at the top have the best selection of potential mates! Moreover, those at the top are much less likely to experience the kind of financial crises that can put a great strain on a marriage.
The wealthy always had financial independence. That's why nothing much has changed at the top. Now non-wealthy women have a lot more financial independence too.
There's been no cultural rejection of the institution of marriage. After all, as another commenter here astutely noted, there wouldn't have been such a massive battle over gay marriage if we didn't care about marriage. The point of divorce is to get out of a bad marriage, which is much more possible now than before. Also, people have more freedom now to delay marriage until they're ready for it, when they feel the timing is good. Some people prefer singlehood, even later in life, but they're the minority.
> do something that's good for them--getting and staying married.
I disagree that this is necessarily good for them. I don't want to recite my personal life on HN, but let's just say that I wish my parents had divorced a lot sooner than they did. And now they're much happier divorced than they were married, and I'm also happier as a result. If anything, the problem is that people get married too easily, and too young.
When people come together into larger and larger communities, then more specialization can take place over longer periods of time.
This is if you have a stable situation, of course.
Additionally, writing and schools are critical, so knowledge can be passed down systematically. Not randomly by "tribe elders."
And the schools should be fairly open, meaning being able to be open about what they say and teach. To be able to push boundries.
Ancient Athens had writing, they had schools. They passed down architecture and philosophy in regular schools. If you are in hunter/gatherer mode, nobody really is a schoolteacher. The smartest hunter/gatherer, even if he or she was legit Einstein smart, is going to be out hunting for rabbits or deers or planting rice. You must have "extra." Extra population that supports scholars. That's why in medieval times, the Catholic Church was the keeper of scholarship. They had a lot of priest for the laypeople, but they had money to support a lot of people who hung out and did intellectual work. And, those who WERE Einstein smart joined the Catholic Church, because they figured out where they should go with their talents, just like a super smart student today knows to apply to MIT or Harvard or Princeton, etc.
Once you have the modern type university (as opposed to one or two subjects like law and religion, for example), then it all starts to snowball. Technology starts to snowball. This is one of the reasons why the Western world surpassed all others. It started in ancient Greece, and continued. England created the first modern universities at Oxford and Cambridge. Some claim it was University of Al Quaraouiyine, Morocco, but it was not a modern style university in the subject offered.
This is why England dominated the world. It passed on knowledge from generation to generation until it was absolutely the top. England's geography of being an island and cut off from mainland Europe also helped a lot.
"Third world countries", meaning hunter/gatherer, tribal, herdsman cultures, just don't have the critical mass. They simply do not have the numbers of people to make it.
The USA is the 4th most populated nation on earth. With this great population, if one out of a million is a tippy-tippy top person in some area of study, then there are going to be 330 in each area of the USA, since we have 330 million population. In every endeavor.
On the other hand, if you are in a country that has 2 million people, your odds of having that one in a million person are 3 in every area of endeavor/industry. 330 vs 3 is a big difference when you are talking about near-einstein level.
Except in a very populous country, these exceptional people will find their way to other exceptional people (usually via universities), but those in "3rd world" countries who are 1 out of a million might be stuck doing subsistence farming or shit like that. And even IF one of those 1 out of a million in Sudan, let's say, were to somehow find their way out, they would move to England or USA or Germany or France, and not stay in their poverty country. And, those countries would GLADLY give them citizenship if university was to line up behind a super skilled person.
.
Culture is important. Population density is important. Inculcation of education is important (which is part of culture, I guess.). If a culture spurns education, they will never self-actualize.
People talk about islam and how they "saved" all the knowledge, and that's all great and stuff, but what have they done for us lately? The reality is that the super religious anti-education conservative elements of islam took over and fucked over the learned islamic peoples, and the conservatives of islam destroyed the smart part of islam. The same that is happening in the USA right now.
So to answer your question directly, their world countries did not "become" how they are. They are exactly like they were 10,000 or 50,000 years ago.
In order to change, you have to change. If someone is conservative and does not like change, then they will want to be like it was 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years ago. There are many, many people today who don't thing viruses or germs are a thing, for example. There are many who still believe in "gods"...like, 96% of the world believe that gods are real.
Meanwhile, the most educated do not go for that. You look at those with science degrees and only 50% believe in a god. Look at the NAS, Natural Acadamy of Science her in the USA where only top scientists are admitted, only 4% accept that a god exists.
So it's like that. Culture. Education. Knowledge. Population. Wealth. Etc.
It is a web of interconnected stuff that takes a long time to put together. England started Oxford in in 1200, and it took 800 years to make it to the peak of their Empire. Their empire fell apart because of the spread of knowledge to other parts of the world. Knowledge. Nothing else. Not war. Not WwI or WWII. Knowledge. Education.
How Abdus Salam was treated aside, Al-Biruni’s books languished for hundreds of years because basically no one read them.