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Transnational Thursday for August 8, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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How can poor countries improve their productivity?

Are you new to this forum? DNA IQ.

Are you new to this forum?

I am.

DNA IQ.

Assuming that this is the dominant variable (I'm unsure of that), how would interventions look like? AFAIK eugenics interventions did more harm than good in the past. What would you have, tax breaks for high-IQ couples to have more kids?

AFAIK eugenics interventions did more harm than good in the past.

Like, the countries than had these interventions are now suffering from inbreeding, deficit of creativity and economic stagnation?

What would you have, tax breaks for high-IQ couples to have more kids?

Yes, and that too.

But foremost is having wish to do that.

Stop subsidizing loss of high IQ people to emigration. Put them in contracts to stay. Stop subsidizing useless degrees, especially female ones. Subsidize sperm freezing (probably highest ROI thing ever) and EVF.

There's many successful men who became fathers at >50 yrs. But their old sperm accumulates mutations. If they used frozen when it was new...

Even if partially true it would not be entire answer. And would be among harder to change so is not a good answer to this question anyway.

Because the question is not factual. It's a "does this dress make me look fat" type of question. The good answer is what they want to hear.

It not like increasing IQ by a mere 15-20 points (not 100) is a difficult problem like terraforming Mars. Just the wish is not here.

Because the question is not factual. It's a "does this dress make me look fat" type of question. The good answer is what they want to hear.

nope

discussing how to tackle say corruption and overregulation can be interesting and fruitful discussion

rather than racist uninformed dismissal

Even if you tweak hard race definition to match current wealth of various areas it would completely fail how and why some areas got much richer within last decades (for example no matter how much you try you will NOT explain East Europe purely by "DNA IQ")

Let's not make strawmen and r-word accusations. Nobody claimed IQ is single causal variable, just the most significant one. East Europe poverty relative to West Europe is mainly due to having planned economy and communists in past. Having communism (IQ denying ideology) lowers your country prosperity for future decades.

Nobody claimed IQ is single causal variable

Are you sure? Seems to me that https://www.themotte.org/post/1116/transnational-thursday-for-august-8-2024/239006?context=8#context did this

Having communism (IQ denying ideology) lowers your country prosperity for future decades.

"IQ denying ideology" not sure has this problem existed there at all, and it was not actual source of problems

and r-word accusations

"Are you new to this forum? DNA IQ." seems quite clear "racism is right", at least I see no real difference

Are you sure? Seems to me that https://www.themotte.org/post/1116/transnational-thursday-for-august-8-2024/239006?context=8#context did this

Well unlike you, u dominicq was able to understand that correctly: https://www.themotte.org/post/1116/transnational-thursday-for-august-8-2024/239108?context=8#context

at least I see no real difference

if you come here to sneer rather than to learn...

That sounds like a pretty difficult problem, at least practically speaking.

While it's a popular view here, it's hardly a consensus. Particularly on a country-scale.

IQ-income is more relevant between countries than between individuals in a country (assuming monoracial). Because luck evens out and zero-sum games even out. A high IQ person in average IQ country might have low income because he's low on social ladder relative to his countrymen. This doesn't work between countries. A whole country cannot be low on social ladder, it's a zero-sum game.

A whole country, however, might have bad government/have bad relations/bad resources etc. (btw, high corruption in a country also decreases IQ-income correlation for individuals in that country)

My understanding of the whole genetics vs. IQ thing is that there is indeed a strong correlation, but not that it's the only factor. You seem to be saying this yourself in another comment.

There's been just a few too many countries that went from top dog to basketcase, and vice-versa, for me to go full IQ-gene-reductionist.

There's been just a few too many countries that went from top dog to basketcase, and vice-versa, for me to go full IQ-gene-reductionist.

like... which examples? You not being clear of differentiaing two associations, genetic IQ vs phenotypic IQ and phenotypic IQ vs GDP per capita, doesn't help.

If there's a high IQ population under different policies (e.g. China) then it might get richer or poorer, this doesn't not simply low IQ population might do something to outcompete high IQ pop under normal government.

Argentina went from nearly US tier rich to. It's still very rich to median person.