Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead

My point is that the Author has picked a practice by a couple of tribes on a Continent so diverse and large you could fit the states, the UK, and still have space for 30 or so more countries, and passed it off as the norm.

Funerals can be expensive, anywhere. I don't want you going away with the impression that all these poor Africans are using up all their hard-earned savings to throw these outlandish burial ceremonies.

Another data point: maybe 35-40% of people in Africa identify as Muslim. They usually bury people the same day they die or at worst the next day, and there is no elaborate coffin, usually just a cloth sheet.

What do you mean that Africa is a continent of great diversity in cultures, languages and history? They all look poor and black to me.

This is off-topic, but how does funeral insurance even work? You're guaranteed to die at some point, right? To me, insurance is there to hedge against something not very likely, but expensive. The odds are you're going to pay money in, and never see it back (if you don't get sick / crash your car / whatever).

Is funeral insurance just some form of forced savings?

I mean, if we’re treating anecdotes as facts - my grandfather - British - used to send most of his pay packet from the navy back to support his mother and his grandmother - and one can hardly argue that the U.K. hasn’t seen economic development.

Shit, I was 19 years old, supporting my mother, my great aunt, and my sister. A few decades on, retired millionaire. It put me in such dire straits that I was forced to work several jobs and then start businesses in my spare time until one stuck. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Ain’t nothing wrong with helping others.

Why are you assuming capital formation is even beneficial for people? Poor workers in Arkansas do not benefit when Ford sells their crappy wares around the world. Children in Utah aren't getting a better education when Zuckerberg sells more ads.

I'm pretty sure it's actually because industrialization is upstream of the education and supply chains to make hormonal birth control widely available, and being pregnant and giving birth is an incredibly challenging, risky, and frequently unpleasant burden that's only shouldered by half our population.

What if there were several of these birthday parties in succession due to siblings dying?

Came here to say this. It's a very narrow perspective that shows in sub headlines like "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies".

One could also take the lens of "Kinship societies are making people's wealth more equal to reduce competition and jealousy, increase harmony and happiness" – although I have no data whether these people are genuinely more happy. It quotes some business-oriented Ghanians who seem quite unhappy about sharing their wealth. And yet, the perspective of indivual wealth over group wealth is assumed and never critically reflected upon.

I'm not saying that their way is better or something like that. I just think that reading the article is a good exercise in reflecting on one's own views on life and wealth.

Yes and while I find the article to be quite insightful on the whole, I can't take it seriously as an anthropological study.

There is a strong ethnocentric bias that the author failed to declare / acknowledge, which reduces the credibility of his claims. Also there is little supporting data.

Especially this line really highlights it: > by the 2000s, many Ghanaian hospitals were earning more from storing dead bodies than from treating living patients.

Surely those resources are better spent healing the living.

We can say "but it plainly isn't purposeful", but the same applies to pets, vacations, every kind of art and craft, fancy cuisine, pure mathematics, dance music festivals, religion and all associated economic activity, all sports ... I'll stop there, but the two main points are: firstly, the value in life is about a lot more than moving real resources, or paper, or food and shelter; secondly, nobody knows what it is all about, man. It's hugely a matter of opinion, what's good and worthwhile. Economic activity is perhaps the ongoing process of making guesses about the answers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296547 690 points, 500+ comments.

I’m not trying to get pity, but it would be mistaken to say that I brought it on myself. My wife didn’t bring it on me either. We simply eroded over time. But when marital bonds erode, it turns out they take family bonds with them; or at least, her side of the family. My side isn’t much, so hers was my primary source of social interaction.

This is a self inflicted wound in the sense that I could have formed a lot of social bonds with people other than my wife. And I tried to, sometimes. But when you’re spending 20 years with one person, it’s hard to make time for anything else, especially if you want to do good work (in the researcher sense).

So it’s more of a “pick two: family, friends, work”. I went the family and work route. I don’t regret it, but it means that now all that’s left is work, which can be a hollow existence.

Luckily, modern society has a surplus of ways to help motivated people form social bonds. Once I get my car back, I’ll be going to the local therapy groups, one of which is wood crafting. Random hobbies like that with random people sounds fun.

The thing to avoid seems to be dating apps. Jumping from one relationship into another is universally known as a bad idea. I’m hoping that casting a wide net (going to groups, reading clubs, DnD, or other activities) will fill the void.

Honestly though, what helps the most is that I have a daughter. She’s almost 3. I’m very happy we had her, and just remembering that she’ll have a nice life helps me appreciate my own.

Modern society makes it easier than ever to isolate yourself. I spend my days sitting in a house alone, having Amazon drop off USB-C cables, with my biggest social interaction of the week being the door to door salesman (who, ironically, is trying to sell me a door) that’s coming by tomorrow. That’s the default state; you have to push back against it, and that’s hard. But it’s probably mistaken to say that those who go with the flow are suffering from self inflicted wounds. Societal flow used to be towards social groups (church being the most obvious example) instead of paths that end in loneliness.

Off the top of my head from something I read a while back: Finland is listed as one of the happiest countries, but also has a higher rate than normal of prescribed anti psychotics and anti depressants, and also has high rates of alcoholism and suicide. Something isn't lining up there.

My own anecdotal experience as well conflicts. When I travel through Scandinavia, people seem... Fine. Friends I have there say you're basically not allowed to talk to strangers, at all, everyone is meant to just quietly ignore each other. Meanwhile the deeper I go into Vietnam, even deep into where people still live on stilt houses made by hand tools, the happier and more sociable people are. My friends say the same of various countries in Africa.

1) In the poor countries, I find people are generally quite happy living their day to day lives but rate their happiness low - because they think people in wealthy countries have it so much better. I.e. they underrate their happiness because they think wealthy people must be so much happier.

2) Vice versa in the wealthier countries - so many miserable people, but, they feel that they can't complain because they see how bad things are in the poor countries.

I think these "happiness ratings" are a bunch of bullshit. Some of the happiest families and communities I've seen are in the poor countries while so many people are miserable and lonely in the wealthy countries.

I believe it is very very hard for a person to subjectively rate their own happiness. (Edit to add, especially when they are comparing their own happiness against cultures and people they have mostly only seen on TV).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#Interna...

The western version then of being a pariah for not paying up is violence rather than ostracization and shame. Of course until you get rich enough that you can corrupt the government itself.

Also enormous abuse.

Lots of people lament loss of family ties in western society.

But they completely ignore amount of abuse that comes with power of:

„you have no one else to turn to, stay with your family, we will beat you, rob you, but family is important”.

Relative wealth disparity increases as absolute wealth increases because below a minimum level of income people starve. IE you can’t make 1/10th the median wage in a subsistence economy long term you just die. But a homeless person can survive for decades in the US on ~500$ a month.

> the wealthiest family of a kin group from 3 generations ago will be much more likely (relative to other cultures) to be the wealthiest family 3 generations from now.

I am not sure if this claim is true as well, wealth generally does stay within family lineages across cultures, generally people losing their wealth or even gaining it is an outlier. See any landed gentry in Europe, Asia

Actually; you can see this in America, as income continues to be more concentrated, and more unequal, economic productivity for an individual does go down as there's less opportunity to accrue wealth as before.

In gift economies, all these distinctions are meaningless. The bounty of a funeral would be a direct representation of the deceased's popularity (likely established through their generosity) as well as their family's ability to convice people to e.g. spend time making s beautiful coffin, bring food, play music.

Anyway, another lens to look at kinship relationships through is as a resilience strategy to volatile conditions. Any given stress (drought, job losses, etc) are unlikely to affect everyone equally, so the network functions as a safety net under many conditions.

Venture capital applies a similar strategy in the other direction if you squint a bit. It's impossible to predict who will succeed a priori, so the capital is spread to many different bets simultaneously in the hope that the successes outweigh the failures over time. Many of the "rituals" in the VC ecosystem (ghost hiring, puffery, fad chasing, etc) aren't particularly useful for any individual company's success, but I don't think many people here on HN are going to argue it's not economically effective as a whole.

Explain China[1] and its steep ascent, blowing past all European countries, and soon - the USA.

1. Or India, to a lesser extent. There's a lot of recency bias when it comes to economic outcomes, as if we're at the end of history. I'm guessing at least one 19th century British industrialist/gentleman probably praised their Anglo-Saxon heritage and the Protestant (Anglican) faith as necessary ingredients to national wealth, as opposed to the fallen Catholic empires of Spain and Portugal, or the heathens in Africa, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle and far East.

Property is not the right word for this. Responsibility is the right word.

When a bride price is paid, you give money (or goods) to the family. In return the responsibility of the care of the woman is passed down.

This is not a traditional monetary style transaction in the way it appears.

In practice, a lot of families that accept a bride price end up returning the value in different ways. But the responsibility is passed down from parents to partner and that's why divorce is so frowned upon.

Then, a year or so after my mom passed it became clear dad was heading that way, and he set up the same arrangements with the same advocate.

It was a great decision. The advocate shielded the family from a lot of unpleasant details, allowing us to focus on spending as much quality time with dad in his final weeks. In particular it was a huge benefit for my aunt, who's the oldest surviving part of that branch of our family, was very close to my father, and struggled through severe emotional turmoil in the situation. Without that advocate and dad's prior wishes being made very clear, she would have felt duty bound to try to run his cremation and remembrance personally in a way that would have been even more horrific for her.

So for anyone who is facing these situations on the horizon, I strongly suggest looking into something like this. Having a 3rd party that isn't the hospice staff, and that isn't a relative in emotional duress, was fantastic. The advocate dad chose previously was managing director of a care home, and switched to doing advocate work as a sort of soft retirement. So she knew in detail how all of that world works and was excellent at getting stuff done for dad.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/oct/13/cleani... (warning: graphic)

It's been 15 years since I saw that movie, but I recall the remains presented to be just the skull and some larger bones - all dried out completely.

What happened to the rest of the body I don't recall.

Oh, and diamonds burn while aluminum oxide does not.

There's no need to go broke when you can buy a superior product for less money.

I mean a party? Thousands and thousands of dollars for just one day?

I did the irrational thing, paid a lot for my wedding and it was really special. My family is much closer to her family because of it. From me and my wife's rational self-interested perspective, it makes no sense: we would be in a better position financially had we not splurged a little for the wedding. Our house could be bigger. We could have more optimally allocated our capital.

However, the family bonds being strong outweighs all of that. When we zoom out a little bit and look at our extended family and friend group, it all makes sense. These are the people who will help raise our kids, take care of us when we are down on our luck, etc. The 50 people who attended can, because of our big expensive wedding, put faces to each others' names. It was a fun party for us, but it actually served a very important purpose. This value will not be registered in the GDP number.

I'm poking fun at the article. That first of all, we (the enlightened, modern, etc) spend an absolute metric fuckton ton of money on irrational meaningless shit, due to social pressure. I would point the author of the article to homeopathic medicine, which is a 10b market; just ten of these equals the GDP of Ghana. Do a ctrl-f for colonialism or imperialism or extraction and... yeah, sure. They must be poor because they do quirky things at funerals.

Are Indian families spending multiples of annual incomes on weddings? They're lavishly done. But the cost of labour, land and e.g. fresh flowers is also ridiculously cheaper in India than in the West.

Is it though? Can you elaborate why you think that?

To me, they seem to serve basically the same purpose. They are both, at the end of the day, a way for family & friends to get together and bond over a person/people.

I clicked through to the linked about Zimbabwe, and the article misrepresented the research (at best). The paper notes that when families have unexpected funeral expenses, they hold onto assets if they only have one in that asset class at the expense of temporary food insecurity, which would be like not selling your only car in the face of a shock medical bill and opting for cheaper groceries/ramen.

The paper notes that when Zimbabwean more than one item in an asset class, they are likely to sell one (or more). This reads a lot like generic loss-aversion and not specific to attitudes about death, which would require to be controlled against expense type (e.g. weddings, environmental disaster or unexpected loss of income).

Regardless the question still stands and I’ll put it more plainly: Do the lifetime costs and contributions(including the accrued funeral costs) to a kinship society outweigh the shared benefits? That would be my criteria for an overall “bad deal”.

And this is no shot at the author because I appreciate the exposure to another culture, but if the framing is the highest earners in a kinship society subsidize the lowest, there is also a question of the extent to which the high earners were successful in spite of or due to their kinship society membership.