Paradox of Plenty | Hacker News Reader

Paradox of Plenty

en.wikipedia.org

14 pointsnimzoLarsen12 comments

Paradox of plenty: Countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.

Is it not obvious that scarcity provides the harsh and unforgiving conditions for the natural selection of positive traits?

Taking Europe, for example, our ancestors would not have survived without their adaptation to the climate and its consequences, breeding cooperation, empathy, industry, invention, efficiency, etc. A frivolous, impulsive, unintelligent people seeking immediate gratification would not have survived the winter.

True but a bit too simple I think.

In the article the Dutch disease is mentioned. It has three effects:

1. It makes the other exports less competitive (why bother with abundant resources?)

2. Imports financed by natural resources revenues increase, appreciating the currency (a double whammy for exports)

3. This causes a shift away from manufacture and similar industries rendering the economy more dependent on natural resources

I also think natural resources can be grabbed by individuals more easily than the skilfulness of a people leading to higher income inequality.

> cooperation, empathy, industry, invention, efficiency, etc. A frivolous, impulsive, unintelligent people seeking immediate gratification ...

Are these things that can be naturally selected for?

You stopped reading just shy of your answer:

>...would not have survived the winter.

What I mean is, it's not clear that those traits are sufficiently genetic in basis for natural selection to occur. There may be more of a cultural incentive to encourage those traits.

Of course there's a strong genetic component. For an extreme demonstration, no amount of cultural pressure is going to prompt the emergence of these attributes in a population of watermelons or earthworms.

I agree that you need to code for some level of intelligence in the first place. But I think you need to go further and show that there is genetically-driven variation in those traits among humans. Otherwise it may be that the variation is due to socialisation or epigenetic factors.

Contrary examples: The United States and Canada are both countries with an insane abundance of many natural resources, yet developed quite robustly. Several European states had a similar experience though to a slightly lesser degree of natural resource diversity. Germany, Finland and the UK come to mind at least for specific resources like coal, and oil in the case of Finland.

The Arab petro states are also economically well off despite their financial dependence on revenues from the world's most globally vital natural resource. (we can forego mentioning their state of political development though). One the other end, there are many countries with few natural resources worth a damn that also happen to be severely underdeveloped, and political basket cases.

IDK. I just recently passed through Pine Ridge, SD and what I saw there was on par with just about any non-warzone levels of poverty shown in movies. Dogs and trash roam the streets freely, most people either walking or riding in cars that at best could be called "unsafe", dirt everywhere, houses covered in graffiti or just straight up collapsing from lack of repair.

The US has a huge number of insanely wealthy people and a large percentage of people "above the poverty line", but the people under the poverty line live a life that is almost a distant from you as you are from a typical multimillionaire, and there are easily millions of them.

Im the last to deny that the U.S. does have poverty pockets that can sometimes bee entire lagoons, but you can't fairly compare it to most of the world's third world countries in all but the most extreme, relatively isolated examples.

Truly, go live in a developing country, even one that's considered decently wealthy by the standards of developing countries (Mexico is a good example) and you'll see the difference very quickly if you leave any of the compact, wealthy, tourist-oriented bubbles of society.

I live in such a country and comparing it to the U.S. as a whole is absurd. Even most of poor America is absurdly wealthy and reasonably well run by the standards of much of the world, though as your example shows, exceptions do apply, though they're not always by forced circumstance so much as unconscious choice.

I mean is that not because they get exploited by other countries?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com