What Would Constitute a "Meager Lifestyle"?

[Speaker to Animals]

The Cambrian Explosion was where it really went to seed.

[Martin Hash]

Trying to give "aid" is a from of predicting the future, and the more a culture varies from our own, the less chance we get it right, and a lot more chance we get it wrong.

My perception of Asia: Communism was very good for it, and I hate Communism.

p.s. You can stop the Communism & go full Capitalism now Asia, you're good.

[Okeefenokee]

Asia has a hard time letting go of serfdom.

[DrYouth]

Stopping the flow of aid to Africa will just lead to more wars over limited resources and starvation as a result.

Not necessarily...
Much of this aid simply props up delinquent governments.
Making the governments more responsible directly to their own people may in fact lead to positive change that is interfered with by aid which focusses the governments on courting foreign financial agents.

[Speaker to Animals]

Stopping the flow of aid to Africa will just lead to more wars over limited resources and starvation as a result.

Not necessarily...
Much of this aid simply props up delinquent governments.
Making the governments more responsible directly to their own people may in fact lead to positive change that is interfered with by aid which focusses the governments on courting foreign financial agents.

Africans are not Europeans or European Americans like us. There are reasons why we tend towards open societies, participatory government, and toleration of independent thought. Asians tends towards autocracy and merit-based bureaucracies. Both of these systems work for each of our people, but they are not feasibly interchangeable.

What makes you think African people are somehow more genetically predisposed towards European-style social and economic structures than even the Asians?

[Speaker to Animals]

It also occurs to me that the genetic behavior that allowed for our people's sudden ascent in the late middle ages could very well have resulted from the endless cycles of the Malthusian trap. Our ancestors were forced to deal with cycles of famine and want in ways that we can't imagine today.

We have not allowed the developing world to adapt to modernity, which creates dependencies as they grow in populations on par with post-Malthusian peoples like European and East Asians. But they are not post-Malthusian people. They lack the widespread adaptations and predispositions to accomplish this. Development out of the Malthusian trap is not simply about acquiring skill-sets, the right frame of mind, and a suitable ideology. We are still animals and much of our behavior remains genetic at least in predisposition. For instance, we all know that rattling proverbial sabers and going to war all the time is terrible for our species' future. We all know that we shouldn't pump ungodly amounts of pollution into the atmosphere. We all know we shouldn't fuck up our planet. But we do it anyway because we have not yet developed the genetic predispositions towards that kind of behavior. These things take time, and if you want to speed them up, you'd better consider the impact of your social, economic, and political institutions upon the fertility of your people and who is getting selected to breed more children..

What if it's our very aid and influence that created all these famines and necessities in the first place? Strange that progressives, who's benchmark fictional universe is Star Trek, don't seem to grasp the problem.